Mr Sandman. A beige single, fading towards white. Large buds and flowers. Healthy plant with good foliage, stems good enough to hold the flowers upright. Rather late flowering for a single. Hybridized by Chris Laning, unregistered.

Féerie. Not only a peony perfume, but also a variety itself. Bred by French hybridizer Cayeux, introduced in the nineties. Unregistered it seems, although a seedling of it is, named Coral Silvertone. Clearly P. peregrina is involved here. It’s very tall, has good foliage and outstanding stems. Very sturdy and firmly remaining upright. Flower size…Read More

Pastelegance. Perfectly formed large flower and a very attractive color. Alas the plant habit is far from outstanding.

Age of Gold. One of the early Lutea-hybrids. A shrubby peony (or ‘tree’ peony if you like to exaggerate a little). Pretty flowers and color but the flowers are sideways hanging (the so-called ‘Lutea-hook’) and sometimes hidden in the foliage. Fragrance is very strong and, well, quite addictive.

Dipple Gowt. From Nilitz x P. obovata ssp willmottiae. There aren’t that many hybrids with willmottiae around. Saunders had his Silver Dawn which resulted, some generations further down the line, into Lois’ Choice and Sunny Girl. Dipple Gowt was bred by Fawkner more recently, a sibling of Bhutan and some others. It has a pale greenish yellow…Read More

We’ve been having crap weather for several weeks now. Still waiting for Corals and others to start blooming. Some varieties take the harsh winds, many rain showers and cold temperatures better than others. Vanilla Schnapps is one that really detests this: many dried up buds, open buds, damaged stems and so on. It really needs a sheltered position.…Read More

A few more days and the bulk of the standard hybrid cultivars will start flowering. Red Charm, Coral Charm, Command Performance, Cytherea shall Bloom the following week. We, and many others, are hybridizing for early varieties. As can be seen from the plants now flowering we’re advancing well.

Clearstream. Somewhat beige fading to white. Great plant habit, large buds, early. Comes from Claire de Lune x Estria. This plant and its’ father by hybridizer Thierry Rat. The mother Claire de Lune is from P. lactiflora x P. mlokosewitchii, which was a very difficult cross.

Paeonia mlokosewitchii, or at least some garden hybrid of it, I’m unsure whether this corresponds to the wild species. The leaflets are divided till 13 sometimes (5-3-5), which is unlike the species description of 9 (3-3-3). I have better yellows than this, but without doubt mlokosewitchii features in the ancestry of all of them.

Nancy, its’ third year. Impressive I’d say.