Brief Encounters with Peonies
by Sally Gregson

Peonies are like Christmas: their joy lies as much in their anticipation as in their experience. And like Christmas they are a celebration of joy and a feast of exuberance. Their large globular buds tantalise, opening petal by petal to reveal impossibly lavish flowers, mounds of colour, the embodiment of hedonism. Then, all too soon, the entire bloom falls with a sudden thump, its glory-days over.
But however brief an encounter it may be at flowering time, its beautiful foliage is an asset to any border all summer. In spring the shoots emerge scarlet and fat from the bare earth, slowly unfurling their curved, glaucous foliage.
Cottage gardeners have known the old double red Paeonia officinalis ‘Rubra Plena’ since it first found its way into this country from mainland Europe at some time during the Middle Ages. It was used medicinally to relieve pain and keep nightmares away and, as a long-lived plant, it must have outlasted many of its gardeners.
Herbaceous peonies have been grown, loved and bred ever since that time, resulting in many sumptuous modern varieties. One of the most popular, P.’Bridal Veil’, has a collar of lilac-pink petals surrounding a raised central crown of narrow, pink-tipped white petals, with an intense perfume. And a taller variety, P. ‘Kelway’s Supreme’, bred at the Somerset nursery of that name, has tousled blush-pink double flowers.
Single-flowered peonies are more ephemeral but their transience is justified by their beauty. Perhaps the most renowned is P. mlokosewitschii, known as ‘Molly the Witch’ to its friends. Each flower lasts for a whole week at most, its pale moonlight petals surrounding a tremble of golden stamens. Then in autumn its seed-cases split open to reveal shiny, boot-black seeds nestling in their red velvet-lined pods.
Tree peonies have an altogether more tortuous and exotic history. For untold centuries they were bred in imperial China exclusively for the Emperor from five species native to different parts of the country. The most famous, or notorious, of them all is P. rockii. Its immaculately white, semi-double flowers bear a deep maroon stain at the centre, which arouses covetousness in all it meets. Joseph Rock came upon this legendary plant on one of his expeditions before the Second World War, in a remote monastery where the Llamas had always propagated it by seed. But peonies hybridise naturally and freely so when they meet their kith and kin the resulting seedlings are beautiful, but diverse. Nowadays five-year-old plants of P. rockii are imported from China and grown on for two years until they flower. Those that closely resemble the peony that Rock described are given the name P. rockii ‘Joseph Rock’s Form’. His many-coloured, alluring sisters are sold as P. rockii seedlings. And all make bushy plants about 2m (6ft) tall with beautiful foliage.
Japanese breeders have also produced remarkable tree peonies, which are available here. Many bear both the oriental name and its delightful translation. P. ‘Renkaku’, or ‘Flight of Cranes’, has tissue-paper white semi-double flowers the size of dinner plates. P. ‘Kokuryu-nishiki’, ‘Black Dragon Brocade’, has semi-double blooms of rich, deep red. ‘Nishiki’ means ‘brocade’ or ‘variegated’, and the outer petals of this Black Dragon often have white stripes and a greeny-white edge. In this country too tree peonies have delighted plant breeders and gardeners for over a hundred years. P. ‘Duchess of Marlborough’ produces enormous semi-double flesh-pink flowers that open out like crushed silk. She and her exotic relatives would grace any thoroughly English garden in May.

Care and cultivation

• Peonies are hardy survivors in a sunny border. Single flowers will last longer in light shade.
• They prefer free-draining, slightly alkaline soil. In acid conditions add a little lime.
• Incorporate plenty of organic matter when planting, and mulch them in early spring.
• Do not plant them too deeply or they may fail to flower well.
• Peonies are not on the menu of slugs or rabbits, but they can suffer from fungal diseases. Ensure that they are not overcrowded.