Peonies Passion
Peonies give your garden bursts of color and wonderful fragrance. Being a perennial they come up every year and are easy to grow. Peonies are versatile, long-lived landscape plants. They can make excellent low hedges in the summer or used as a group or singularly to splash color as a focal point or accent in flowerbeds and borders.
To make the wisest selections for your particular garden, know the many forms: single, Japanese, bomb, double, and semi-double. Single peonies contain rows of five or more big petals encircling a fertile center of seed-bearing yellow stamens. Japanese, including anemone, have five or more petals with a showy cluster of small, sterile, petal-like segments in one or more areas. The bomb form has the blossom’s mounded center full of petals that are smaller than the outer petals, but have a similar color and texture. Double peonies have large outer petals surrounded by frilly overlapped petals of the same color. They form a big, classic, rose-like globe that has almost invisible stamens. Semi-double peonies have fewer inner petals than a double with the petals being fairly uniform. They are decorative, bear pollen, and the yellow stamens stand out against the petal color, unlike the double peony. (more…)