2013 American Peony Society Gold Medal Winner - 'The Mackinac Grand'

At this year's 2013 American Peony Society Board Meeting, the APS Board elected Peony 'The Mackinac Grand' as its 2013 American Peony Society Gold Medal Winner. I do not currently grow this peony, nor do I have it on order. So I will have to get a specimen for myself to evaluate here in my growing zone. Since I was a member of the seated board, I was able to vote for the Gold Medal winner, but I decided to abstain since I felt I did not have enough knowledge of the candidates to elect the finest specimen. However from its photos, it appears to be a pretty plant with flowers held nicely above the foliage. Peony 'The Mackinac Grand' was hybridized by Reath and registered in 1992. The petals appear to be a true red with a bright yellow center of stamens showing through a large round of fluffy red petals. I'm interested to try this newest Gold Medal Winner!
Peony 'The Mackinac Grand'

2013 Deadheading Removing Spent Peony Blooms

I just spent the last 2 days deadheading my peonies - removing the spent blooms on my peony plants. You can do this on all of your peonies if you like. Or if you want to see if any seeds will develop in the seed pods you can just deadhead those with no seed pods - like most double and bomb type peonies. These types rarely set seed. The single and semi-double peony forms are more likely to set seed. I've heard it is very important to remove all of the peony foliage and never compost it. So any peony foliage I remove from my gardens is always sent to the landfill. If you have seen the effects of botrytis on peonies, then you know why this is so important. Botrytis is a fungus that can be spread in wet conditions most easily on developing and growing foliage. It will cause a black spotting on the leaves and stems, bud abortion, and in heavy cases black fungal growths with spores. So as you can see my peony refuse is bagged and stored in my trash receptacle until my friendly neighborhood trash man comes to take it away!

Bagged Deadheaded Peony Blooms & Foliage

2013 Last Peony Blooms of the Season

While cutting back some spent blooms today, I found these last two blooms of my peony season. (This would be like Week 8!) They are from Peony 'Kelway's Glorious', and it is just that - Glorious! I am so happy to find these last two blooms. I cut them and brought them inside right away and put them in a vase. I placed them on my mantle so that I could enjoy them next to our wedding cards. While cutting back this particular peony I also found several peony bombs on the ground. These are just peony blooms that never fully opened and just fell off the plant. Yes, it is true that sometimes late season varieties do not open here in this southern growing climate. However, that won't stop me from trying to grow them anyway. I had more than a few that did open on this bush, and as you can see I did get a few more that opened at the very end. So it is definitely worth it to grow this very late season variety, Peony 'Kelway's Glorious'!

Last Blooms of the Season Peony 'Kelway's Glorious'


Peony Bombs - Never Opened Blooms

2013 Peony Blooms Very Late - Week 7

It has been a great peony blooms season this year. What ever rain we had during the bloom season seemed to be limited to one day or if there was more than one day of rain, the sun seemed to come out at some point during each day to dry the foliage - which is great! This is the least incidence of disease I have seen on my peonies in quite some time. So the weather and in particular, the rain, really does make a difference in the spread of peony diseases. The blooms in week 7 are just barely hanging on. Most of the blooms you'll find this week are some of the last in a cluster of blooms to open. However there is still some beauty to appreciate and savor before the peony blooms season is over for the year. If you're looking for some very late season peonies to extend your bloom season, these are definitely some of the latest blooming varieties for me. I hope you appreciated all of your peony blooms as much as I did!

Peony 'Felix Supreme'	Peony 'Myra MacRae'
Peony 'Lady Orchid'	Peony 'Primevere'

2013 American Peony Society Winterthur Garden Tour

Winterthur
The gardens at Winterthur were a great contrast to the gardens at Longwood. The naturalistic feel and giant old trees of Winterthur gave it a more historic feel versus the more modern displays of colorand neatly trimmed beds of Longwood. Winterthur's house was filled with antiques and period architectures from the 1600's, 1700's, and 1800's. Winterthur boasts a collection of over 90,000 objects of American art and antiques.

Winterthur's Interior

The weather was a bit cooler, and the breeze was awesome. The difference between the garden styles was evident not only by the form and feel of the planting, but also by the number of caretakers. Winterthur operates with a team of 9 versus a team of several hundereds of gardeners and volunteers at Longwood. Winterthur also had a much larger peony collection than Longwood. Longwood's peony collection was mostly tree peonies with a couple herbaceous peonies mixed in their perennial border.
Winterthur Peony Garden
Winterthur actually has two large dedicated peonies collections. One is a partly shaded collection of herbaceous and tree peonies accompanied by a gazebo, which was made to showcase A.P. Saunders hybridizing efforts. This garden had mostly finished blooming since tree peonies are generally earlier than herbaceous, and most of A.P. Saunders herbaceous hybrids are early blooming varieties. The other peony garden is a larger, more formal, mostly herbaceous peony garden with a round center, stone pathways and staircases, and a garden bench. The peonies in this garden were still in full bloom. The season was nearing it's end, but there were still lots of lovely blossoms!
Winterthur Peony Garden