In 2016 I was offered to purchase a peony business from Bob Yaremko, who had a collection of 450 peony varieties – Bob was the owner of Parkland Perennials which had a rich history of delivering customers with beautiful peonies for almost 40 years. Once introduced to the beauty, hardiness and magnificence of the peony plant I decided to continue Bob’s legacy.

Currently Parkland Peonies collection contains over 700 Peony varieties and just over 50 named martagon lily varieties. The majority of our Peonies have been collected over the last 4 decades, but we are continually adding new and exciting varieties to our catalogue each year.

I manage the peony collections at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London. We have just undertaken a wholesale redesign of our peony display garden, and I am particularly keen that it starts to better represent the diversity of species peonies. We currently grow around 25 different species and subspecies (both herbaceous and shrubby), and the new design is centred the phytogeography of these species plants – showing our visitors that they can be found in the wild, and are therefore endangered by environmental threats, and that the diversity of the garden plant originates in nature.

I have a peony species collection which is mostly intended for hybridizing with more recent hybrid cultivars. They are being grown in an elevated bed, under shade cloth, whilst some are being grown in horticultural crates with a very light airy soil with lots of free draining amendments like perlite, clay balls, grit and lava rock.

Because they are intended for hybridizing with advanced double flowering hybrids mostly, I don’t have selfed seeds available. If you’re a hybridizer yourself, then perhaps I can share some pollen with you if I have enough available from my species plants.