Peonies are coming into their full bloom! These gorgeously large, fragrant, and delicate blooms are the goal of pretty much every gardener. True, the blooms can be fleeting, but the plants are easy to grow! I use four types of peonies in my garden, all of which I find incredibly beautiful: - fern leaf (paeonia tenufolia) - herbaceous garden (paeonia lactiflora) - itoh (paeonia intersectional hybrid) - tree (saxifragales) Fern leaf peonies are the easiest blooming and stay small, around two feet.

Leaf diseases like powdery mildew, proliferate in warm, moist conditions. Peonies are very susceptible to powdery mildew and a way in which we can help reduce the disease is by pruning after the flowers are done to create airflow through the center of the plant. We try not to remove more than a third of the green leaves because we need enough for the rest of the summer to photosynthesize food for storage in the roots that create next year’s flowers. We only want to do this type of pruning on a p