Of Poppies and Peonies

Fri. Jun. 29, 2018

Click below to listen to my 2 min Garden Bite radio show:  Of Poppies and Peonies

GBTK 6-29-18

Cruising my emails, one of the nurseries sent me tantalizing photos, tempting me with their oriental poppies!  I must say, these late Spring/early summer bloomers are gorgeous. Though the blooms don’t last long, they’re worth it.  

You can plant bareroot plants in the Fall. The bloom that caught my eye is a 2018 introduction called ‘Snow Goose’.  It’s a pristine white with a deep maroon center.

Poppy ‘Snow Goose’ White Flower Farm

Pair with ‘Raspberry Queen’

Poppy ‘Raspberry Queen’ White Flower Farm

To hide the browning foliage, you can toss in some annual cosmos or plant poppies with peonies!  Speaking of …. There are more peony choices than I imagined. Oodles of white with yellow petaloids or pink!  Ruffly outer petals or smooth! Multiple shades of red and corals. Bloom periods vary, which is perfect for poppies.  There’s a really lovely variety called ‘ButterCup’ offered at a farm near me called Aspelund.  The stems are stiff, so they hold well and the foliage is dark green and narrow. This peony grows to 30 inches.   Buttercup has a lovely fragrance.

Poppy ‘Buttercup’ Aspelund

It would look really pretty paired with the poppy ‘Raspberry Queen’!  

Plant your bareroot peonies this Fall and next year you’ll have a small plant with perhaps a flower or two, the following year they creep and the third year, they leap!  

Song Sparrow farm & nursery also offers some incredible beauties! 

One that leaps out at me is called ‘Circus Circus’, you’ll just have to go to my Garden Bite Facebook page to see this beauty!  Yowza! 

‘Daisy Cornet’ is simply wild!  

Peony ‘Daisy Coronet’ Song Sparrow

Find information on TREE peonies from peonysenvy…  that’s the name of the website! Don’t type that into your browser!

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