People Enjoy Peonies in TheGardenLady’s Garden

“Peony Pink,” Explore #444, January 11, 2012 by Puzzler4879

In the last post, TheGardenLady talked about the hellebores in her garden that make people stop and compliment.  Today she will talk about another flower in her garden that has the WOW factor.   These flowers are peonies.

Paeonia lactiflora-sinensis ✽ Pivoine herbacée “Bossuet” ✽ Herbaceous peony “Bossuet” ✽ Pivoine de Chine ✽ Chinese Peony. by ✿ nicolas_gent ✿

People are especially complimentary when the Chinese tree peonies are in bloom. It is hard not to admire the gorgeous 8 inch flowers These shrub like plants can produce almost a hundred plate-sized flowers when the shrub is mature.  The Chinese tree peony, either because it blooms earlier and is sturdier, does not seem to have the flower stems knocked over as readily as the herbaceous peonies. Still when the herbaceous peonies are in flower, they, too, are magnificent.

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Some Things to do in the Garden in October

october garden 33678 by flora.cyclam

I am getting ready for winter and thinking of next spring. Are my readers also doing the same?

I did my first major raking. Living with so many trees, this raking will be ongoing until the last leaf has fallen. But I never throw any leaves away. They are always saved. I don’t leave any leaves on my street. I greedily collect those, too, for composting. I hope you have compost bins for your leaves.

I just planted over 60 tulip bulbs for next spring. Now I have to hope that no varmint eats the bulbs. Unlike daffodil bulbs, tulip bulbs are not poisonous so animals may want to dig them to eat. But the vision of tulips in bloom, is worth the risk. Last year I only lost a few tulips. I have been talking to nursery people to ask what they do to safeguard bulbs and have been told that they put in red hot pepper flakes in the holes with the bulbs. They buy the cheapest giant economy size of pepper flakes for this purpose. I used up my old bottles of pepper flakes and also put in some moth balls into each hole with the bulb food. Then I sprinkled Tabasco sauce or hot chili oil plus stale ground black pepper on the ground after I covered the bulbs with soil. Hope that will detract those cheeky chipmunks.

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Visiting Cricket Hill Garden

peony intersectional

Double Vision by thegardenbuzz

It may look dismal outside and the rains are not letting gardeners work in their gardens, but this GardenLady is still “high” from a long weekend spent looking at gorgeous gardens and outstanding nurseries in the Northwestern corner of Conn. Let me explain.

This past weekend, I convinced a gardening friend to visit some of the gardens I have written about on TheGardenLady.org blog and other gardens or nurseries I wanted to visit to enable me to write about them. The added bonus was that this weekend there was a charity event to raise money for battered women and the charity was an event featuring top notch plant businesses and garden furnishing businesses that were selling their wares to those who attended and a second day of visiting private gardens. You paid the entrance fee, all money went to the charity, and spent two days in garden lovers paradise.

I wanted to visit Cricket Hill Peony Garden, a garden that I have written about and recommended in past posts. The owners of this garden carved a number of acres out of wooded hilly Connecticut to make their peony nursery and 7 of those acres are a show garden of just peonies; though they have other flowers mixed in with the peonies which I suggested that they should also sell.

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Cricket Hill Garden: Name this Peony Contest

Are you a fan of contests? Are you  creative with  names? I just learned that Cricket Hill Garden is having a contest to name a really pretty new peony. Winner will receive the peony.

Check out the peony contest here.

Check out their link here to learn how to enter. Let me know if a reader of TheGardenLady wins.

Also, check their site if you are having problems with your peonies. Cricket Hill Garden is the place to go with any type of peony questions.

Cricket Hill Garden and Peony Heaven an Outstanding Peony Nursery

Spring River Flowers Moon Night

The river is smooth and calm this evening.
The peony flowers bloom.
The moon floats on the current.
The tide carries the stars.

by Ch’ien Ch’i (date unknown) Sent to me by David Furman

TheGardenLady’s herbaceous peonies (these are the typical peonies most people grow) are just opening but her tree peonies which are woody or shrublike, that are still relatively young, have no buds nor flowers. I learned that tree peonies can take 3 or more years to start flowering- some as long as 8 years to start flowering. But then the plant can live for at least 100 years-tree peonies have been documented to have lived as long as 400 years.

Peonies -Paeonia are one of the oldest cultivated flowers in the world, being mentioned in early Chinese writings 2800 years ago. They are China’s National Flower. Then they were taken to Japan where they started to be raised about 1000 years ago. And in the 1700’s English botanical explorers in China first saw the “tree” peonies and brought them to England.

TheGardenLady loves to tell her readers of excellent nurseries. What designates an excellent nursery for TheGardenLady? The nursery owners have to be PASSIONATE about their flowers. They have to be knowledgeable about their plants and willing to share that knowledge and help people who are interested in the flowers the nursery sells. And the nursery has to sell an extensive number of quality plants. Having a show garden is an added bonus. To this end, TheGardenLady wants to tell her readers about Cricket Hill Garden in Thomaston, Ct.

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