How to Plant and Grow the Beautiful Peony
May 28, 2025
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Tons of tips on growing peony flowers with ease.
This beautiful flowering perennial is easy to grow once you find the perfect spot in your garden.
Peonies are one of my all time favorite cut flowers -- the blooms are so full and lush and sometimes incredibly fragrant! Even the foliage is a deep, pretty green...the combination makes for stunning bouquets and arrangements.
I'm sharing all the tips you'll need to grow these gorgeous flowers! Peonies can be a bit finicky at first, but once they're established you will rarely need to touch them again.
They are seriously one of the most glorious flowers I've ever seen. So fluffy and delicate.
And the scent -- if you're lucky enough to have a type of peony with fragrance, it is truly intoxicating.
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Peonies love full sun!
Full sunlight is best for these beauties. I've found that peony plants in dappled sun do well as well (we are in zone 6).
If you are a in a hotter, southern state, it's recommended to give them more shade than not.
Where do peonies grow best?
They enjoy a well-draining soil, but at the same time, they do quite well in our thick, clay soil in Indiana. So who knows!
I always add a layer of mulch around the plant, but in the early spring I clear just a bit of the mulch away from the new growth coming through the soil.
The great thing about this plant is once you have it in a spot it likes, you really don't need to touch it again. You don't even really need to use fertilizer on them. I feed lightly once in the spring (before they start blooming) and that's it.
Do you grow these beauties? They are the Indiana state flower and grow everywhere here -- they love our crazy weather!
Peonies are finicky about how they're planted.
Peony plants are notoriously hard to transplant once established. A friend of mine was giving away a ton of plants years ago (see my free hosta garden here) and she had this big, beautiful peony bush I dug up and took home. It was massive! I was giddy, but it died almost immediately. :(If you attempt to transplant, do it in the fall. I'd say late September or early October would be ideal. Keep in mind if it does stay alive after moving it, it may not bloom the first year.
If you're starting with a new plant in a pot, be sure to plant your peony roots fairly close to the soil surface -- only about two inches deep. This allows the plant to go dormant in the winter and save up energy for tons of blooms the next spring.
(This need for cold temps is why they don't usually do as well in year-round warmer climates.)
I have a peony that has not bloomed as much as I'd like over the years, and it probably needs to be moved up closer to the surface just a bit.
If your bush has plenty of lush, green leaves but no blooms -- the plant depth is most likely the culprit.
When should I cut peonies?
I find if you cut peony blooms too soon they will not continue to open up. I get better results when I wait until the blooms are about halfway open.
There's a "marshmallow" trick you can use as well -- if you squeeze the bud between two fingers and it has some give like a marshmallow, it's OK to cut.
If it's hard, you'll want to wait.
I find even this bloom to be too tight:
I have much better luck when I wait till they're about halfway open like so:
I've heard there are a few tricks to get the tighter buds to open up, but if you just wait another day or so they'll be ready anyway. :)
How do I get ants off my blooms?
Peony blooms typically have a lot of ants hiding in the folds of the flower. These bugs do not harm the plant, in fact they help to protect it.
I don't recommend using any insect repellant on the plant or near them -- at least in the spring when they are blooming. It's an old wive's tale that ants help to open the buds. They do eat away at the nectar, but this process doesn't open the flower.
Ants are still quite helpful to the plant!
At the very least, ants are territorial and will guard the peony buds from other pests that like to eat the blooms.
Every year as my peony bushes bloom, I waiver back and forth on cutting them and enjoying them inside, or leaving them to add beautiful color to our landscape.
Usually cutting wins out! If you'd like to do the same, you can use this simple method to get the bugs off.
How to stop your peony stems from drooping.
The only problem with the gorgeous, huge peony blooms is that they get heavy! Once the buds start opening, the stems can't handle the weight and will lean to the ground:
This isn't a big deal, as the stems are pretty strong. But if the bloom sits against the mulch or any surface for too long, that part of the flower will start to die off.
To prevent the droop, you can place a tomato cage over the plant as it's starting to grow. I'm going to try that trick next year!
How long do peony shrubs bloom?
The peony only blooms once a year in the late spring to early summer. Ours typically bloom in the last week of May to the first week of June. (I'm sure this timeline varies by climate.)The rest of the year the plant is a lovely dark-leaved bush. It's a full, pretty plant and I love how it looks in our landscaping even after the blooms are gone.
I typically cut down our bushes to ground level at the end of the season after the first frost. The leaves don't take well to the cooler weather, so they will die back and not look great.
You can also cut them back in early spring if you don't mind the dead looking plant all winter. :)
The great thing about this plant is once you have it in a spot it likes, you really don't need to touch it again. You don't even really need to use fertilizer on them. I feed lightly once in the spring (before they start blooming) and that's it.
Do you grow these beauties? They are the Indiana state flower and grow everywhere here -- they love our crazy weather!
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I love peonies but I just don't get enough sun anywhere in my yard for them to do well. I can't get over the size of your blooms!
ReplyDeleteA trick from my gardening cousin: When the plants come up in the spring, about 10" tall, she puts large tin coffee cans (bottoms cut off) around them. This gives them added support for their heavy blooms. Not many tin coffee cans out there anymore, so I've had success with garden wire...the kind you use to support tomato plants.
ReplyDeleteSo pretty! Peonies are my all-time favorite flowers.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Rachel
wayfaringrachel.com
Love them! It's the first year in our new house and we have 2 bushes. I just cut 2 blooms off. They smell so nice!'n
ReplyDeleteHaving driven from Atlanta to Kansas City (and back!) to dig up and transplant my great grandmothers peonies- I can tell you that they transplant well IF done in early October, if you wash them/dip them in a fungicide bath, and if you divide them/cut the decaying parts off- that way the smaller plant has less energy it needs to produce when trying to repair what happened than trying to move a 5-15 year old bush in one piece.
ReplyDeleteWe ended up with 20 plants from 3 of my great grandmothers festiva maximas- best gift I have ever given my mom!
i had two plants (one very large) that were approximately 10 years old. Decided last fall to transplant and did so in Sept. Even split the large one in two so now there are three. One thing I read was to plant VERY shallowly and water well. Followed that and hoped they would at least live but didn't expect anything more than that this year cause even a nursery transplant doesn't usually bloom the first year. They have blooms! I'm in MA so it should be a couple more weeks before I get those gorgeous flowers. And one other tip - my local nursery sells 'cages' (they sort of look like tomato cages but stronger) to support the heavy weight of the plant. I stake them when they are still relatively small cause they seem to shoot up overnight and I don't want to miss the staking opportunity. Also purchased a fourth plant a month ago. As predicted, no blossoms.
ReplyDeleteDenise
I have peonies that are over 100 years old. Transplanted and split year after year from our families homestead. We have found its best to split early spring... just as they pop through the ground. Our favorite is a fern leaf variety as it blooms at least 6 weeks earlier than the others
ReplyDeleteLove peonies. My grandmother had them in her garden and when she passed the family got starts from her plants. At the time I didn't have a home so I don't have her plants but many of my cousins have them in their gardens. When I finally got my home this was the first plant I planted. My peonies are the talk of the neighborhood. I where it is very windy. Surprisingly the blossoms stand up the the harsh winds. Love them!
ReplyDeleteI was just listening to my Iowa Public Radio's horticulture day and they said peonies needing ants to bloom is a misnomer-- here is a link to an earlier Iowa State post about it: http://www.extension.iastate.edu/newsrel/1999/may99/may9904.html. Your peonies are beautiful! and now you don't have to feel bad about getting rid of the ants around them. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for sharing this tip. I was just about to buy some new peonies, so I'll keep this in mind and hopefully they'll last longer!
ReplyDeleteXo,
Miki
http://mikialamode.com
Thanks Sarah for the peony info. I guess I won't be growing these gorgeous plants here in Louisiana. I'll enjoy seeing yours this time every year...and yours are IMPECCABLE.
ReplyDeletePeonies definitely don't need ants to bloom. The ants are attracted to the buds because of the sweet liquid that is on the buds. I use those hoopy plant stakes, (two hoops and three stakes spaced around the hoops)
ReplyDeleteI live in MA as well and mine are in full bloom now. I think I have four plants and there are at least 50 blooms. Deep rose, pale pink and white. So lovely. I have never had any trouble transplanting them and do not do anything special. They may not bloom the next year after transplanting, but frankly I haven't even found that to be true.
Love peonies! I had great luck transplanting in my last house but don't get enough sun at my current house and miss them. It's funny, I'm from Kansas City where they are pronounced pee-a-nees, but 20 years ago I lived in Mass for several years and they were pronounced pee-o-nees. Beautiful no matter!
ReplyDeleteQuick tip: I use baker's twine (ordered off Amazon) to give my peony bushes extra support right before they bloom. I just go partway up the bush, under the foilage, and wrap the string around the plant once. I tie it off with a bow, and presto! Even after a soaking storm, my peonies stay off the ground.
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly how I do mine. Always holds them up good. I'm glad to know I'm not alone. Lol
DeleteMy pink peony has so many blooms this year and I don't know why, but I'm delighted! I used the large frame from an old lamp shade to support the stems and it works great.
ReplyDeleteMy peonies have black spots on all their leaves. What is this?
ReplyDelete