Peonies

With their large, bowl-shaped flowers, peonies are long-lived perennials that come in a range of colours

- Graham Rice

PEONIES combine an exotic air and a blossoming feeling of eastern otherworldliness with a welcome resilience, a frost hardiness and a long life to bring us plants that are always tempting and that we can depend on for years of enjoyment.

All have large – sometimes very large – bowl-shaped flowers with a forest of golden stamens in the centre, although this sunny centre is sometimes transformed into a mass of extra petals. There are two main kinds.

Hardy perennial peonies

The majority of peonies are hardy perennial plants. They emerge in spring, flowering generously with single or double flowers, or various intermediates, in early summer. The flowers come in red to white and everything in between, and are also good for cutting. They die back to the ground later in the year, and the slowly expanding crowns will survive our coldest winters.

Tree peonies

More like shrubs than trees, peonies in the second group develop a slowly expanding woody structure carrying flowers that can sometimes be huge. These too are frost hardy and also bring yellow shades.

The hybrids between perennial peonies and tree peonies, called Itoh or intersectional peonies, usually dying back to a low woody structure, are among the most impressive of all, but are slow to propagate so plants can be expensive.

Some of the best peony varieties have been awarded the Award of Garden Merit by the RHS.

6 hardy perennial peonies

‘Angel Cheeks’