Peonies will be making their Markle this year...
The dazzling flowers of peonies are apparently a favourite of Meghan Markle, inset, and you too could have peonies flowering in your garden come early summer, says Hannah Stephenson. Some could even be at their best around the time of the royal wedding in May. Are they easy to grow? The pot-grown peonies you find in garden centres can be planted at any time of year, while bare-rooted types are ideally planted in October.
They prefer heavier soil in a sunny or slightly shaded spot, and add plenty of organic matter to the planting hole. Will they flower the first year? You might be lucky, but peonies don’t like being moved or replanted, so it may take a year or two for them to settle. Transplant existing plants in early autumn or spring. Keep the rootball as intact as possible. How long will the flowers last? That largely depends on the weather. Vast bowls of petals emerge from thick stalks above the pretty foliage in late spring and early summer, which will need supporting with a stake or frame to stop them falling over in the wind. The flowers of herbaceous peonies last little more than a week or two, less if it rains. For a longer flowering period go for ‘Bowl Of Beauty’, a Japanese type which flowers for almost twice as long as the others and has a fantastic fragrance, growing to around 90cm. Any rules for cutting? Don’t cut stems in their first year of planting. Leave the plant to strengthen a bit and you’ll have more blooms to cut the following year.
Always leave at least a third of the stems on each plant, which will help it gather strength and feed the root through summer and early autumn.