Tag Archives: #redpeonies

Peony of the Month and Gifts!

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What would Christmas be without red?

We picked this one as our peony of the month for that very reason - its rich red Christmassy hue.

‘Scarlet Heaven’ is an unusual, rare and highly collectable intersectional peony with large, single, bright crimson red flowers. This is a mid season bloomer with golden-yellow anthers and finely cut divided green foliage turning red in spring and autumn. The stems are sturdy, so no staking is required.

Red Itoh peonies are rare and ‘Scarlet Heaven’ is known to be one of the best of the reds as it performs very well.

Reminisce

Although they won’t be flowering at this time of year, when you do see them flowering from May - June next year you will have an opportunity to reminisce about all things Christmas and how much life has changed.

Or simply just enjoy the burst of red in the garden.

And as we were speaking about in our previous post about gratitude – it could be an opportunity to reflect on the wonders of nature. How grateful we are for all those juicy underground processes that produce these fantastic flowers.

Gift Ideas

However, if you’re looking for ways to get into the blooming season spirit right now, there are other ways to give the gift of a peony.

For instance, with our giftware range!

And if you have a few friends and family with different talents, there are options for every flare:

For the Plantsman/woman:

A beautiful British Bloom collection of gardening tools (manufactured by Burgon & Ball and RHS endorsed) with a Peony and Dahlia design. The Trowel and Fork are made from hardened and tempered stainless steel for superior strength and durability (years of rust resistance) and engraved with a quote from Gertrude Jekyll:

“The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies”

There are Beech Wood handled options too.

Also in this range:

 

For the Tea Lover:

An English fine bone ‘Breakfast Tea Gift Set’ belongs in every tea lovers home. Made in England together with a British artist, this collection of teapot, milk jug and printed tea towel has a delicate peony blooms, buds and bee illustration in soft light rose pink and a deeper warm pink.

Also in this range:

 

For the Chef/Baker Extraordinaire:

With the same lovely design described above, the oven gloves and apron set bring Spring back into the kitchen, no matter what the season.

For the Interior Decorator:

How about a cotton cushion cover with peony art printed on both sides?

Or beautiful works of art available as mounted prints or as framed pictures?

Both designed by Carolyn Carter who has used our award-winning peonies as inspiration to create a unique and exclusive fine art collection.

 

And if you can’t decide, perhaps a gift voucher is best.

We’re all for simplifying what can sometimes feel like a season of silliness.

May it be more merry than mad!

 

Peony of the Month – ‘Cytherea’

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What’s love got to do with it?

Staying true to the Greek origins of the word paeonia, this peony with its perfection of form is aptly named. In Greek mythology Cytherea is another name for Aphrodite – the goddess of love and beauty.

And the goblet shaped form of these deep cherry red petals is enough to make anyone fall in love!

As temperatures rise this semi-double unfolds, becoming a more open bowl shape and fades to a rose colour, then salmon pink and finally pure white as the season progresses.

Cytherea is a herbaceous peony. Herbaceous peonies are a timeless classic perennial plant for the garden. They die down in the winter and come back in spring, each year producing better displays than the one before.

Origins

An early mid season bloomer, Cytherea is rare and highly sought after. It was registered in 1953 by Saunders and awarded the APS Gold Medal in 1980.

Professor Saunders is one of the world’s most well-known peony hybridizer, becoming known as the “Father” of the modern hybrid peony. His scientific breeding program with herbaceous and tree peonies was extensive and done with the help of friends at the New York Botanical Garden.

Although he was not the first to cross peony species, he was the first to bring a large variety of species together. He systematically crossed each one with the other, most of which hadn’t been used in crossing before. This resulted in the creation of a huge number of hybrid races and varieties, bringing new colours in and lengthening the flowering time.

An Albiflora x lobata hybrid, Cytherea is just one of those very many beautiful results of Saunders' work. It makes a great cut flower and has a light, sweet scent that makes it even more welcome in a vase on the table.

In the Garden

Cytherea was awarded the APS Award of Landscape Merit in 2009. This award is for peonies that have outstanding landscape and growth characteristics. Some of these characteristics are their disease resistance and the ability to withstand adverse weather. They protect themselves by closing up in unfavourable conditions and open up again when the coast is clear.

Do you have a spot in the garden you’re looking to fill? Although it is quite an intense shade of red initially, it is a remarkably easy colour to pair with other colours in the garden such as yellows, purples and blues.

Let your imagination go wild!

Otherwise you could combine Cytherea with a few other red peonies in different tones such as ‘Buckeye Belle’ with its deep red blooms, ‘Riches and Fame’ in all its fuschia/pink red glory and 'Miss Mary' with its rich red single flowers and golden stamens.

So much choice.

Which ones will you pick?

Peony of the Month – ‘Red Charm’

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What about a bit of red to spice your Spring garden up a bit?

It’s not every day you come across a red as true as the one worn by ‘Red Charm’. Like that Little Red Riding Hood in the dark forest, ‘Red Charm’ stands out in the garden and is very attractive to visitors.

Be they wolf, butterfly or human…

A cross of the well-known P. ‘Rubra Plena’ it was registered by Glasscock in 1944 and became an APS Gold Medal winner in 1956.

And 65 years later it’s still going strong... The wonder of peonies! We can’t gush enough about these plants. They really are our favourite.

‘Red Charm’ is an indulgent, herbaceous perennial that is early flowering and sturdy. It produces lots of deep, ruby red cup-shaped flowers with ruffled centres that keep expanding as the flower opens. The flowers are bomb-shaped and very large, sometimes reaching up to 20cm across. Although it opens a scarlet red colour, as the flower matures it becomes darker and darker ending up a deep plum or purple.

Once established it can reach up to 90cm in height and its bushy growth habit and fine, dark green leaves remain lovely into Autumn. This makes ‘Red Charm’ a great choice if you would like to create a small hedge or need some structure along a pathway. You could also pop it in a flower bed with a mix of other perennials for a striking display.

It’s likely that you will enjoy having this reliable and vigorous beauty in your garden so much that you will come to depend on being dazzled by its beautiful flower and foliage displays year after year.

This exquisite lady in red with its substantial, waxy-textured petals and strong stems makes an excellent, long-lasting cut flower and has a pleasing, subtle fragrance.

If you’d like to add ‘Red Charm’ to your collection, here are some guidelines for planting this herbaceous peony:

  • Plant in full sun or part shade in a sheltered position
  • Any fertile soil will do, as long as it is free draining
  • Plant with the crown (top of the root) no more than 5cm below the ground. With container grown plants, simply plant them at the same level they are in the pot they arrive in
  • Don’t bury it with mulch. Peonies like organic matter but don’t mulch over the crown as it might not flower the next Spring
  • Once you are ready to plant your peony in the garden, start by digging a hole twice as big as the root ball of the plant and put some organic matter or compost at the bottom of the hole. It is often a good idea to mix some fertiliser (such as our Professional Peony Feed) with the compost
  • Place your peony in the centre of the hole, ensuring that the crown is level with or just below the surface level, backfill with compost and soil and firm into place. Water well but don’t over-water; remember that the root will rot if it gets too wet
  • Peonies will also be happily planted in a container so you can follow the same process, just make sure you feed your container grown peonies once a year to make sure they have enough nutrients

 

And there you go!

In this case, red means ‘go’!

Grow peony grow!

Peonies that Symbolise Love

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With Valentine’s Day coming up are you wondering what peonies to send to a loved one? Which peonies symbolise love?

Peonies symbolise many different things, depending on the colour. In China, red is a symbol of royalty. Only emperors and their families used it, so red peonies came to embody wealth, prosperity, honour and respect. Peony is a traditional flower symbol in China and is called 牡丹 (mǔdān) which means “the most beautiful”.

In Western culture red flowers are generally associated with love and red peonies have come to symbolise love, romance and passion.

Pink peonies are commonly used in wedding bouquets as they symbolise lasting love, good fortune and prosperity. They can also depict love at first sight.

FLOWERS SPEAK A THOUSAND WORDS

These days most of us don’t think very deeply about the specific meaning of flowers when deciding what flower to pick. We usually just go with a colour or form we like, don’t we?

But there was a time when flowers spoke volumes.

Communicating with flowers dates back to the 1700s in Turkey but the Victorian era was a time when this form of communication really took off. This happened after Lady Mary Wortley Montagu visited Turkey and discovered the way harem girls communicated with each other – sending coded messages via flowers.

She wrote:

“There is no colour, no flower, no weed, no fruit, herb, pebble, or feather, that has not a verse belonging to it; and you may quarrel, reproach, or send letters of passion, friendship, or civility, or even of news, without ever inking your fingers.”

 

It was the ideal vehicle for expressing thoughts and feelings that were considered taboo at the time. And in the Victorian age full of rules and restrictions, that was just about anything to do with expressing emotions.

Assigning meaning to specific flower types to communicate feelings or desires is known as floriography and it became not only a craze but one of the main ways anyone was able to get their untoward thoughts across without uttering or writing a single word.

So if you received a bunch of flowers like this:

White Peonies (bashfulness) + Red Peonies (true love) + Magenta Ranunculus (dazzled by your charm)  + Pale pink Sweet Peas (meet me)

You can be sure potential love is on the horizon!

GIVE THE GIFT OF A PEONY

So why not send a peony? You never know what could happen…

Some options of appropriately named and coloured peonies you could go for are:

'Love Affair'

Unusual, rare and highly sought after. A mid season flowering 'Itoh' semi-double, white, bowl-shaped bloom with a beautiful fragrance

'My Love'

Herbaceous perennial with striking double blooms in blush with small red flares fading to white

'Bowl of Love'

A short version of 'Bowl of Beauty' with carmine pink outer petals and pale cream petaloids. An exquisite fragrant, mid season bloomer

'Pillow Talk'

A gorgeous, sweetly scented, large double peony with soft, creamy cameo pink rose-type flowers. Makes an excellent cut flower.

'Berry Berry Fine'

Unusual and highly collectable, mid season ‘Itoh’ with finely cut foliage on sturdy framework and incredible fragrant, single to semi-double, deep lavender pink flowers highlighted with darker pink streaks and plum basal flares

'Pink Parfait'

A late flowering, herbaceous perennial with double, deep pink highly fragrant blooms that make excellent cut flowers

'Red Charm'

An indulgent, sturdy, early flowering, herbaceous perennial with large, fragrant, deep ruby red cup-shaped flowers with ruffled centres

'Blaze'

An early-mid season, strong and reliable herbaceous variety that’s a floriferous grower. It has beautiful fragrant, semi-double bright red flowers with golden centres

'Peter Brand'

A heavily scented herbaceous perennial with divided foliage, erect stems bearing deep pink-red double flowers, with ruffled inner petals

Which peonies would you choose?

Click on a pic to take your pick!