Not forgetting the Peonies

Paeonia 'Bowl of Beauty'

I brought Paeonia ‘Bowl of Beauty’ with me from Sussex and added a rather insignificant single pale pink bought from the market.  My ‘stock’ peony comes from the tree peony we bought here (at great cost).  This was a delicious dark carmine pink, with pinkish-glaucous leaves.  Within a year a rash of palest pink flowers encircled the single spindly stem of the tree peony.  Despite the advice that peony often dislike disturbance I pulled the plant to pieces and replanted the graft plus its roots on its own, with the shorter growing ‘stock’ in the front of the border.  This year we were rewarded with two flowers on the tree peony and every little stem of the stock plant producing a flower.  It adds to the general haphazard planting on this little border.



Tree Peony



A Garden full of Flowers




Eschscholzia californica



Eschscholzia californica seedpod





We arrived back from our May trip to the UK to a garden full of beautiful flowers.  Many of the roses were flowering, the herbaceous peony and the ‘stock’ of the tree peony, iris and the first of the Eschscholzia californica (that name makes me feel uncomfortable) – California Poppy - which I’d never managed to grow well in Sussex not even as an annual.  Here many are perennial and take care of themselves, seeding freely from their long bean-like pods, which once ripe (a light beige colour) twist and snap open spraying their tightly packed tiny black seeds.  The majority of the flowers are a deep rich orange, a few are a paler shade with a deep orange centre, even less of them are creamy white and last year we had a couple of a light maroon which I loved.

The clusters of tight red buds nestled like rubies against the yellow leaves of Spiraea japonica either ‘Golden Princess’ or ‘Goldflame’.  Unfortunately many of the shrubs in the nursery in our village are not labelled fully.  I grew ‘Goldflame’ in Sussex and I would say that the leaves are more golden but as the conditions are so different I’ll say no more.  It’s lovely especially in the bud stage.  Spires of Linaria purpurea ‘Canon Went’ have survived several years beneath the canopy of the Liquidambar; this year joined by a white seedling.