Balancing act that’s short and sweet
W S
HEN choosing plants for a small, modern garden, a plant that occupies four-square feet but only flowers for four to six weeks a year hardly sounds worth considering.
Common sense suggests you would be far better off growing a more compact, year-round performer but you can make an exception when it is a peony.
Peonies have a huge impact on their surroundings, even if it is short and sweet. Their giant powder-puff blooms in pastel-pink shades appear in June and early July, neatly filling the gap between spring bulbs and summer bedding or herbaceous displays. They also make brilliant cut flowers – if you can bear to pick them.
There are dozens of stunning varieties too. Many are rich magenta but Bowl of Beauty is an old favourite, with a dish of large, strawberry-pink petals surrounding a short, shaggy, cream centre. Sarah Bernhardt has large, frothy double pink flowers and Pillow Talk is similar but several shades paler – like candyfloss. But you will find lots more in garden centres and at specialist nurseries.
I would not suggest planting entire beds of them but when you have a well-balanced garden with some evergreens for all-year background as well as a strong supporting cast of roses, containers and bedding for summer colour, a few short, sharp seasonal highlights come in handy, so peonies are ideal.
Try tucking a few clumps into borders where there are plenty of later-flowering perennials standing by to take over from them when they are finished, or grow them in gaps between spring-flowering shrubs where giant peonies are seen against a background of fresh foliage. You can plant some now. Choose an open, sunny spot with reasonably well-drained soil but avoid anywhere that gets early morning sun, since a late frost can scorch the plump emerging buds and put paid to your year’s display.
Peonies love lots of organic matter, so dig in some well-rotted compost. Buy pot-grown plants and put them in without disturbing the rootball. Make a planting hole the same shape and size as the pot and after tipping out the plant carefully, sit the rootball in place making sure the surface of the compost is barely below the surface of the surrounding soil.
This is important, since planting too deep is one of the main reasons peonies fail to flower. For the same reason do not mulch round peonies, as this also buries the roots too deeply. UPPORT the stems with short stakes or stand grow-through herbaceous plant “cages” over peony crowns. And keep plants watered in dry spells since they are shallow rooting.
Once the flowers are over deadhead the plants and feed with a generous helping of blood, fish and bone in late summer. Cut down old foliage in autumn.
Above all, once you have planted peonies do not move them as they need time to settle in and hate being disturbed.
You may not get many blooms for the first few years but they get better as they grow older.