Planting, Growing, and Caring for Beautiful Peony Flowers in Your Garden
The Almanac Garden Planner - Use It Free for 7 Days!
Plan your 2025 garden with our award-winning Garden Planner.
There’s nothing quite like a peony in full bloom: those big, fluffy flowers look like they were made for daydreams and wedding bouquets. Whether you’re wooed by their romantic petals, heavenly scent, or the fact that they can live longer than most humans (seriously!), peonies are a gardener’s dream come true. In this guide, we’ll show you how to grow peonies that come back stronger each year, plus where to plant them, how to extend their bloom season, and why they’re the floral royalty of any garden bed.
About Peonies
In the 1930s and 1940s, plant catalogs listed only three peony choices: white, crimson, and rose pink. Today, thousands of varieties are available.
Peonies are flowering perennials best planted in autumn for those outrageously beautiful flowers that bloom from spring to summer. They make magnificent cut flowers and also bear lovely foliage that stays green.
They are cold hardy, so any place you need an overcoat makes them happiest—they require a cold period for bud formation—a frustration to some southern gardeners.
Once settled in the garden, peony plants can be content for generations. Some have been known to thrive for a century!
When Is Peony Season? When Do Peonies Bloom?
Peonies bloom from late spring through early summer, depending on your location and the variety of peonies you’re growing.
Many nurseries offer early, midseason, and late-blooming varieties, allowing you to extend the peony season over many weeks and enjoy those lovely blooms for as long as possible!
Peonies are hardy to Zone 3 and grow well as far south as Zones 7 and 8. In most of the U.S., the rules for success are simple: provide full sun and well-draining soil. Peonies even relish cold winters because they need chilling for bud formation.
Types of Peony Flowers
There are six peony flower types: anemone, single, Japanese, semidouble, double, and bomb. Fragrances vary as well—some plants, such as ‘Festiva Maxima’ and ‘Duchesse de Nemours’, have intoxicating rose-like scents, while others are lemony or have no scent at all.
Where to Plant Peonies
Peonies make fine sentinels lining walkways or a lovely low hedge. After their stunning bloom, the peony’s bushy clump of handsome, glossy green leaves lasts all summer and then turns purplish-red or gold in the fall. It is as stately and dignified as any flowering shrub.
In mixed borders, peonies bloom with columbines, baptisias, and veronicas and combine well with irises and roses. Plant white peonies with yellow irises and a froth of forget-me-nots; set off pink peonies with blue nepeta or violets.
Planting
Where to Plant Peonies
Peonies are not too fussy, but choose your location wisely as they resent disturbance and do not transplant well.
Peonies like full sun, and though they can manage with half a day, they bloom best in a sunny spot that gets 6 to 8 hours of sunlight each day. In southern states, provide some shade.
Provide shelter from strong winds, as peonies’ large blooms can make them top-heavy. (Use stakes to hold them up, if necessary.) Don’t plant too close to trees or shrubs, as peonies don’t like to compete for food, light, and moisture.
Grow peonies in deep, fertile, humus-rich, moist soil that drains well. Soil pH should be neutral.
When to Plant Peonies
Peony plants require little maintenance as long as they are planted properly and establish themselves. Note, however, that they do not respond well to transplanting, so you should plan your planting site accordingly.
- Plant peonies in the fall: in late September and October in most of the U.S., and even later in the fall in Zones 7 and 8 (Find your planting zone here).
- If you must move a mature plant, fall is the time to do it—specifically, when the plant has gone dormant.
- Peonies should be settled into place about 6 weeks before the ground freezes.
- Although it’s certainly possible to plant peonies in the spring, spring-planted peonies don’t do as well. Experts agree: they generally lag about a year behind those planted in the fall.
How to Plant Peonies
- Peonies are usually sold as bare-root tubers with 3 to 5 eyes (buds), divisions of a 3- or 4-year-old plant.
- Space peonies 3 to 4 feet apart to allow for good air circulation between the plants. Stagnant, humid air can be a recipe for disease to develop.
- Dig a generous-sized hole, about 2 feet deep and 2 feet across, in well-draining soil in a sunny spot. The soil will benefit from the addition of organic material in the planting hole. If the soil is heavy or very sandy, enrich it with extra compost. Incorporate about one cup of bone meal into the soil. Learn more about soil amendments and preparing soil for planting.
- Set the root so the eyes face upward on top of a mound of soil in the hole, placing the roots just 2 inches below the soil surface. Don’t plant too deep! (In southern states, choose early-blooming varieties, plant them about 1 inch deep, and provide some shade.)
- Then, backfill the hole, taking care that the soil doesn’t settle, and bury the root deeper than 2 inches. Tamp the soil gently.
- When planting a container-grown peony, cover it no deeper than it grew in the pot.
- Water thoroughly at the time of planting.
Types
Peonies bloom between late spring and early summer, but you can plan your garden for a successive display of flowers from mid-May to late June by planting various varieties. Here are some choices:
- Anemone (an advanced Japanese form)—‘Laura Dessert’: cream/pale lemon to white; strong fragrance; early-season
- Single (one row of petals)—‘Sparkling Star’: deep pink; early- to midseason
- Japanese (decorative centers)—‘Carrara’: white, with soft yellow centers; fragrant; midseason
- Semidouble (five or more guard petals and prominent centers)—‘Pink Hawaiian Coral’: pink to coral rose form; slight fragrance; early-season
- Double (large petals, needs support)—‘Candy Stripe’: white, with red streaks; slight fragrance; mid- to late-season
- Bomb (large, like a scoop of petals)—‘Angel Cheeks’: soft pink; slight fragrance; midseason
- Consider, too, the Itoh peony: Named after its developer, Japanese botanist Dr. Toichi Itoh (d. 1956), this flower is a cross between a herbaceous (bush) peony and a tree peony. Its large single, semidouble, and double blooms appear later in the season and last longer than traditional peonies.
Harvesting
Keeping Peony Flowers in a Vase
Peonies make wonderful cut flowers and last more than a week in a vase. For best results, cut long stems in the morning when the buds are still fairly tight.
You can wrap freshly cut peony stems in a damp paper towel and put them in a plastic bag in the refrigerator until you’re ready to use them. When removing the peonies from the refrigerator, give the stems a fresh cut and place them in lukewarm water to wake them up.
Pests/Diseases
Peonies are generally very hardy. Plus, peonies are also one of many deer-resistant plants you can grow in your garden.
However, they are susceptible to:
- Verticillium wilt
- Ringspot virus
- Tip blight
- Stem rot
- Botrytis blight
- Leaf blotch
- Japanese beetles
- Nematodes
- Aphids
Why Are There Ants on My Peonies?
Many gardeners wonder why so many ants crawl on the peony buds. Don’t worry! They are just eating the peony’s nectar in exchange for attacking bud-eating pests. They are attracted to the sugary droplets on the outside of flower buds or to the honeydew produced by scale insects and aphids. Never spray the ants; they’re helping you by keeping your peonies safe!
Catherine Boeckmann
ADVERTISEMENT
So some are thriving? It is amazing! Although generally speaking, peonies are pretty drought resistant (at least, that’s the thinking). You could check the depth of the weaker ones with the tiny stalks, and while you’re at it check their overall condition. If there is damage or any signs of disease (rot) or dryness and discard, if necessary. Fall is the best time to do this.
Overall, you might also check your soil pH; peonies like 6.5 to 7.0. See here for more on that: http://www.almanac.com/content/ph-preferences
You might also just reconsider the growing conditions: soil quality, sunlight, moisture. Above, we advise low to no fertilizer, but if you want to give your plants a boost, a “complete” fertilizer (5-10-5 or 5-10-10) at 2 to 3 ponds per 100 square feet in the spring (or very soon) would be ok. So would, alternatively, an inch or so of aged manure.
If these steps fail to bring the wee ones back to thriving condition by next year, then you should think about replacing them—in which case before you spend any money, you could see if the existing plants can/should be divided.
We hope this helps.
Can peonies be grown in pots if there deep enough?
A large group of peonies were thriving when we bought our house in N Central NJ 10 years ago. Now some seem to be failing - some of the smaller plants have simply disappeared, the larger ones are much less full than in past years. We had a weird warm spell in January where many flowers came up and were on the verge of blooming, then another cold snap. Could this have stunted the peonies? What can I do to bring them back to health?
It’s not clear: did your peonies come up in January? Or did “many other flowers”? That would be a pretty warm spell!
Based on your comment that the peonies are failing, we will suggest that some viruses may stunt and/or deform the growth and cause steady decline. Your best bet would be to replace them with new plants. However, before you do that, you might also take a picture and put the question to a nursery person near you. And ask if it is safe to replant in the same soil. (We can not get a straight answer on that point.)
My neighbor has peonies that I have admired and even been able to enjoy in my home. So I was wondering if using some of those pods would grow some more peonies?
How would I go about it though? I'm thinking there are seeds in there???
there comes a time when peonies require thinning. This is when you can or should collect the ROOTS for starting your own bed of flowers.
I purchased three tubers and planted in the fall as recommended. I get leaves but no flowers. One of the plants had two or three flowers the first spring, but last year and this year I just get the plant with loses of leaves. The other two never bloomed. This is the third spring since planting. What can I do to get flowers? I live in Michigan.
My peony plants, about 12 years old, are doing poorly, and the roots are coming to the surface. My guess is it is because there is a Japanese Maple tree planted nearby, and it is sucking up too many nutrients, and pushing the peony roots up?
Yes, that could be the case. Wait until the peonies have finished blooming this year, then add a thin layer of new soil (you don’t want peony tubers to be too deep; ideally less than 2 inches deep) and a bit of fertilizer.
I cut some of my mother's blooms to bring home. After almost 2 weeks, they are finally dying. I want to know if I can dry out the seeds and plant them?
