The peony has the fattest, most delicious petals and rich green foliage, making it outrageously attractive when it is in bloom. From spring to summer, savor stunning floral displays. Learn how to care for, grow, and plant peony.
About Peonies
Peonies are a perennial that will steal your breath away every year. The plants may even outlive you—some have been reported to survive for at least a century.
When Is Peony Season? When Do Peonies Bloom?
Depending on your location and the kind you are planting, peonies bloom from late spring to early summer.
You may extend the peony season across several weeks and take use of those magnificent blossoms for as long as possible thanks to the abundance of nurseries that provide early, midseason, and late blooming types.
Peonies may thrive as far south as Zones 7 and 8, and they are hardy to Zone 3. The key to success in the majority of the United States is to provide full light and well-drained soil. Peonies even enjoy the winter’s coldness because it helps their buds grow.
Types of Peony Flowers
You can pick from six different varieties of peony flowers: anemone, single, Japanese, semi-double, double, and bomb. The odors of different plants also differ; some, like “Festiva Maxima” and “Duchesse de Nemours,” have seductive rose-like aromas, while others have a lemony scent or none at all.
Where to Plant Peonies
When planted as a low hedge or along sidewalks, peonies make excellent sentinels. As majestic and dignified as any flowering shrub, the peony’s bushy cluster of attractive glossy green leaves lasts all summer before turning purplish-red or gold in the fall.
Peonies work nicely with irises and roses in mixed borders and blossom alongside columbines, baptisias, and veronicas. Plant pink peonies with blue Nepeta or violets, then surround white peonies with yellow irises and a froth of forget-me-nots.
Peonies are not overly picky, but you should pick your place carefully because they dislike disruption and do not transplant well.
Although they can survive in partial shade, peonies like full sun, and they flower at their best in an area that receives 6 to 8 hours of sunlight per day.
Because of its huge flowers, peonies can become top-heavy in severe winds. Therefore, provide shelter. (If necessary, stakes can be used to hold them up.) Planting too close to trees or bushes will cause peony to compete with them for nutrients, sunlight, and moisture.
Grow peony in rich, wet, humus-rich soil that is deep, fertile, and well-draining. pH in the soil should be neutral.
When to Plant Peonies
As long as they are planted correctly and become established, peony plants require minimal upkeep. However, keep in mind that they do not adapt well to transplanting, so you should consider this when choosing your planting location.
- Plant peony in the fall: in the majority of the United States, in late September or early October, and even later in the fall in Zones 7 and 8. Your planting zone can be found here.
- If you need to move an established plant, the fall is the ideal season because the plant will be dormant.
- About six weeks before the ground freezes, peonies should be planted.
- While planting peonies in the spring is absolutely a possibility, the results aren’t always favorable. They often trail behind plants planted in the fall by roughly a year, according to experts.
How to Plant Peonies
- Peonies are typically offered as divisions of a 3- or 4-year-old plant, bare-root tubers with 3 to 5 eyes (buds).
- Peonies should be placed 3 to 4 feet apart to allow for enough air circulation. The development of disease can be facilitated by stagnant, damp air.
- In a sunny area, dig a generously sized hole that is about 2 feet deep and 2 feet wide. The inclusion of organic matter in the planting hole will improve the soil. Add additional compost to the soil to improve it if it’s sandy or heavy. Add about a cup of bonemeal to the ground. Find out more about soil improvements and getting the soil ready for planting.
- The roots should be positioned in the hole just 2 inches below the soil’s surface, with the root’s eyes facing upward on top of a mound of soil. Avoid planting too deeply! Choose early-blooming species, put them approximately 1 inch deep, and provide some shade in southern states.
- Backfill the hole after that, being careful to prevent soil settlement and a 2-inch root burying. Gently tamp the ground.
- Plant a container-grown peony no deeper than it was when it was in the pot.
- When planting, give everything plenty of water.
How to Care for Peonies
Young peony take time to develop, just like children. In order to establish themselves, blossom, and flourish, they typically require a few years. They eventually leave home on their own, fully grown and adjusted… No, that’s just kids, I suppose.
Peonies benefit from gentle neglect. They don’t require digging and dividing every few years like the majority of perennials do.
- Don’t use any fertilizer. Before planting, till the soil thoroughly while adding compost and a small amount of fertilizer.
- Early summer, after the peonies have flowered and you have deadheaded the blooms, is the ideal time to apply fertilizer (such as bonemeal, compost, or well-rotted manure) to a soil that is deficient in nutrients. Keep fertilizing to a few years at most.
- assist the stems Peonies’ stems, which occasionally are not strong enough to hold their enormous blossoms, are the only part of their structure that may be considered weak. Think of structures that allow the plant to grow through the middle of the support, like three-legged metal peony rings or wire tomato cages.
- Peony blossoms should be deadheaded as soon as they start to fade, cutting to a sturdy leaf so that the stem doesn’t protrude through the foliage. To prevent any infections from overwintering, trim the foliage to the ground in the fall.
- Avoid covering peonies with mulch. For the first winter following planting, you can VERY LOOSELY mulch with pine needles or shredded bark when the winters are bitterly cold. In the spring, get rid of the mulch.
Peonies bloom between late spring and early summer, but by planting a variety of cultivars, you may arrange your garden for a succession of blooms from mid-May to late June. Here are a few options:
- ‘Early Scout’ has red solitary flowers that open incredibly early.
- “Firelight”: very early-blooming, single, pale-pink flowers
- ‘Karl Rosenfield’: double, midseason bloomer with substantial crimson blooms
Can peony live too long?
The garden peony (Paeonia lactiflora) is one of the most well-liked and dependable perennials for temperate climates. The majority of gardeners are more than happy with the outcomes they achieve: their plants produce an abundance of enormous, frequently double, and frequently deliciously perfumed blooms when they bloom in late spring or early summer. The ideal plant to spruce up their landscapes or fill vases with cut flowers. Additionally, peonies have a very long lifespan. Many of these plants are still flourishing and bloom profusely after more than 40 years in the garden, and they just need a little hand weeding.
However, not every gardener is as successful. Their peonies rarely, if ever, blossom. Here are some of the explanations:
Peonies grow quite slowly. It may take a newly planted peony plant purchased from a regular nursery a year before it produces its first flowers and 3 to 5 years before it starts to bloom profusely. Starter plants that are less developed, such as those cheap Chinese imports or divisions you made yourself with only one or two “eyes (buds),” can take up to three years before they bloom for the first time. Therefore, it makes sense that so few gardeners start peony from seed. The first bloom will probably not appear for at least 3 to 5 years, and it will take them another 7 to 8 years before they are truly blossoming profusely.
A peony’s eyes must be buried when it is planted, but not too deeply (between 3/4 and 2 inches/2 and 5 cm). Never delve further. If not, the leaves will emerge flawlessly, but there won’t be any flowers, or there will be very few.
Replant the peony by excavating it to the proper depth, preferably in the early fall (the best time to replant a peony). or pause. A peony that is planted too deeply will ultimately rectify itself and grow closer to the surface, but it can take up to 10 years for it to bloom.
Peonies simply don’t enjoy being moved around, and adult plants, which have dozens of long, thick roots that resemble carrots, react even less favorably to the concept than do smaller plants. A mature peony (one planted 7 years ago or more) frequently refuses to flower after being transplanted, or at least does so after a number of years. When mature peonies are transplanted, gardeners frequently discover that at least one of them will start to bloom as if nothing had happened, while the majority will obstinately refuse to bloom 4 or 5 years later.
Peony divisions move considerably more easily than mature plants that have all of their roots and buds intact. A peony that has been divided is renewed, or “made young again.” When done correctly, divisions produce new, healthy plants that will probably blossom the following spring. Three to five eyes should be used to divide. You’ll get a plant that is too immature (see Problem 1) and not yet ready to bloom if you divide the plant into smaller divisions than that, with only one or two eyes. Aim for a peony that is in the middle, essentially a full-of-pep teenage peony, rather than one that is either a stodgy old timer or a wet behind the ears baby.
Read Fall is For Dividing Peonies to learn when and how to divide a garden peony.
Garden peony thrive in full sun, with the exception of the hottest climes, when partial shade is preferable. They will still bloom in most gardens, but with fewer flowers and possibly thinner flower stalks. However, the common garden peony fails miserably in actual shade.
Relocate your peony or take down any overhanging tree branches to lessen the shade. Or grow shade-tolerant peonies, such the forest peony (Paeonia obovata).
The photosynthesis that a peony’s leaves perform enables it to replenish its energy after flowering and to begin preparing for the flowering of the following year. Basically, they “recharge its batteries.” The plant will wither and perish without them. The peony is also not a springtime ephemeral because it requires a solid three months of foliage to store the energy required for the bloom the following year. This means that its leaves must be preserved until the end of the season, or at the very least, until the beginning of September (in the Northern Hemisphere, that is). In mid-July or mid-August, if you accidentally or purposefully mow them down, the plant’s capacity to bloom again will be seriously compromised.
Peonies shouldn’t be pruned after blooming. Till at least the start of September, leave the foliage uncut. Many cultivars’ leaves begin to turn red in September, signaling the end of their active growing season.
A peony virtually never has soil with so few minerals that it doesn’t bloom, but if it receives excessive fertilizer, especially nitrogen-rich fertilizer, it won’t bloom (the first of the three figures seen on the fertilizer label). Usually, overly liberal lawn fertilizer applications made just next to the peony are to blame.
Peonies are not weeds that use up fertilizer; they are slowly developing plants. Apply most fertilizers no more than half as often as advised. In most cases, that is more than enough, especially if the first digit is greater than 10, such as 20-5-10.
Although the garden peony is actually quite cold-resistant and frequently survives late frosts unharmed, a really deep, penetrating frost that occurs at the wrong time, just as the flower buds are beginning to emerge, can destroy them and cause a year without blossoms.
If a heavy frost is predicted just as peony flower buds are about to emerge (their most vulnerable stage), you can protect the plants by covering them with an old blanket or another type of fabric and using poles to support its weight like a tent. Usually, though, it’s simpler to wait until blossoming returns the following year and stoically accept that Mother Nature occasionally plays cruel jokes on gardeners. Simply put, it doesn’t happen very frequently.
Every plant has unique requirements, and peony prefer soil that is rich, deep, relatively loose, always at least slightly moist, and has a pH of between 6 and 7. It is a temperate environment plant that thrives in hardiness zones 2 to 7, preferring a mild to bitterly cold winter. It won’t be a very happy camper and probably won’t blossom in extreme situations, such as a tropical or subtropical temperature, excessive aridity, rocky soil, extremely alkaline or extremely acid soil, or an abundance of invading tree roots, etc.
Grow something else if you don’t have the right conditions to grow peony.
Gray mold or botrytis blight (Botrytis paeoniae), the disease most likely to specifically destroy blossoms, are two diseases that peonies are susceptible to. It can harm or kill flower buds, causing smaller ones to become black and die and larger ones to turn brown and become unable to open. Additionally, it causes the death of stems and leaves as well as brown, water-soaked blotches on the foliage. In cool, damp weather, diseases in general and gray mold in particular are more prevalent.
As soon as you notice any dead flower buds, remove them. Though the plant still requires at least some of its leaves, it may be wiser to keep the foliage in place for the summer so that the remaining leaf surface can perform photosynthesis. However, do cut and destroy the foliage at the end of the season. Applying new mulch each year can be beneficial because it stops disease spores from moving back up from the soil to the leaves after overwintering there. Even if you have to move your peony, make sure there is always adequate airflow and drainage. Apply a fungicide every two weeks if the problem persists each spring, or give up on peony.
You’re all set! a brief overview of nine causes for peony not to bloom. Don’t be put off by peony by the text above, though! Yes, there can be issues, but the majority of gardeners have no issues at all with their peony, and they return each year to blossom profusely. Peonies are perhaps one of the simplest perennials to grow.