When daughter-in-law Dawn offered to write this column about a particularly striking plant, I admittedly flashed to the wisdom of Dr. Sigmund Freud.
You see, I had a case of peony's envy.
And when I mentioned that to Marcia, she mentioned that, A) Freud did not say "peony's" and B) there's actually
.
Which means, not only was my initial thought not correct; it wasn't even original.
So no more peony's envy for me.
Instead, when thinking about those who beat me to that particular play on words, I'll admit to a case of petty jealousy.
Marcia:
I can remember the exact place and time I saw my first peony.
I won't bore you with the details, but let's just say I was in love. They are so impossibly beautiful with their huge, papery blossoms, that I had to have some in our garden.
I figured something that beautiful must be fussy, but they really are very easy to grow, and the slugs seem to leave them alone.
What I think a lot of people don't realize is that many varieties have an amazing fragrance, and that is where our wonderful daughter-in-law comes in.
Dawn is an expert in all things fragrant, especially when it comes to plants.
Dawn:
As with roses -- and spring bulbs, and every genre of plant I've collected -- fragrance was my gateway to peony obsession.
While evocative of charming old-fashioned cottage gardens, until a couple of years ago my experience of peony fragrance was decidedly the opposite of charming. Those romantic petal-stuffed blooms of popular varieties like Festiva Maxima and Sarah Bernhardt were a feast for the eyes and soul. For my nose? Not so much. For me, for many years, peonies often smelled musty, sometimes sharp or even insecticidal.
Then on a whim, I sniffed a potted pink peony. Mesmerizingly sweet, but soft rather than cloying or overpowering the way some fragrant flowers can be. I was transfixed and bought it on the spot. Now Monsieur Jules Elie, enjoyed in gardens since 1888, has a place of pride in my own garden alongside other perennials and shrubs selected for fragrance.
Over the past 20-some years of gardening, I've become more pointed in my search for an array of memorable floral scents. As I've matured as a gardener, I've also come to give more weight to the presence a plant can lend to the garden after its brief window of scented glory. Unlike many fragrant favorites, peonies offer multiple seasons of interest: red shoots unfurl early in spring, a lovely backdrop to grape hyacinths; a riot of blowsy bloom and heady fragrance precedes and overlaps peak rose bloom; and autumn brings lovely color to leaves, usually yellow but also some soft oranges and brilliant burgundies.
More so than with any other fragrant plant, with the possible exception of a couple of roses, peony fragrance can change quite markedly depending upon age of bloom and stage of bloom opening. Monsieur Jules Elie is often hardly fragrant when it first opens, but huge full-blown blooms are intoxicatingly scented. I inherited an unlabeled white peony which smells exactly like lily of the valley, the first day the blooms are opening. Several days later, not only is that fragrance gone, it's replaced by something I'd rather not smell at all.
The strength and type of fragrance can be affected by time of day, temperature and relative humidity. It can be tricky to find consensus about which peony is most fragrant, as our noses can also perceive scent differently.
Recently I visited with Carol Adelman of
in Brooks (outside Salem), who generously shared her -- and her staff's -- opinions of some of their best peonies for fragrance. Her first suggestion: Madame de Verneville, an early blooming white, irregularly flecked with crimson, peony from 1885.
Madame de Verneville is also a top fragrance choice for Kathleen Gagan of specialty peony nursery, Peony's Envy in New Jersey (
Dennis:
They think they're so clever), who I met at the Northwest Flower and Garden show in Seattle this year. Gagan estimates she's sniffed some 700 peony varieties but says there's something special about the scent of the Madame. "There's just nothing like it," she said with a smile.
Madame de Verneville is frequently described in the literature as being "rose scented," as are many very fragrant peonies. If you read our previous column on fragrant roses (
) you already know there is actually a vast array of "rose" fragrances. I have not yet detected the classic damask rose scent in a peony, but the enjoyable search continues.
A few other peonies widely praised by multiple sources as having either strong and/or sweet scent include: white Festiva Maxima, Duchesse de Nemours and White Frost; soft pink Myrtle Gentry, Norma Volz and Tourangelle; and darker pink Edulis Superba, Dr Alexander Fleming and Princess Margaret.
Additional peonies worth seeking out for fragrance include pink blend Chestine Gowdy, Lady Alexandra Duff, My Love and Angel Cheeks.
If your priority is a fragrant peony that will also shine in the landscape come fall, several varieties offer particularly pleasing foliage, including white Amalia Olson; rose pink Miss Eckhardt; pink-and-cream-layered Sorbet; and blush salmon Solange.
Adelman and Gagan both recommend the sweet spicy clove scent of mid pink Carnation Bouquet as a top pick for unusual but pleasing fragrance. Other peony afficianadoes have rhapsodized about blooms with notes of rose geranium (Nancy Nora); honey (Top Brass); lily (Couronne d'Or); citrus (Madame Emile Lemoine); lemon (Ann Cousins); mock orange (Philomele); musk (Reine Hortense); even chocolate (Dorothy J).
Every peony mentioned so far is either white or pink, and the most fragrant peonies tend to be in this color range. If you are after a red peony, strong fragrance is harder to come by. Red Charm, which some find to have a mild clove scent, is the most popular and widely grown red peony. Adelman names Big Ben as her personal pick of all the peonies she grows as the one she wants to keep close for its fragrance. Henry Bockstoce is another red sometimes recommended for fragrance, but you'll have to sniff him and decide for yourself whether that fragrance is pleasing. My favorite fragrant red is probably Old Faithful, which I've seen referenced as having no fragrance at all.
Many of the most intoxicatingly scented peonies -- the large-bloomed, long-stemmed lactiflora type native to China that our grandmothers favored -- require placing support around stems early in the season. Can't be bothered with staking peonies? Adelman recommends several fragrant varieties which can be grown without staking, including pink peonies Dresden Pink, La Perle, Pink Pearl, and Rhapsody; and the aptly named, White Frost.
Adelman offered another tip for those who just can't part with our floppy fragrant favorites. If you have a peony which sets buds in clusters, select a center bud to keep and remove (pinch off with your fingers) side buds when they are the size of a small pea. This encourages one large flower to develop -- perfect for cutting -- rather than a cluster of multiple flowers which can become too heavy for a single stem to hold without support.
The Adelmans utilize this pinching method in their display garden and it may likewise enable you to grow highly scented varieties like Duchesse de Nemours and Edulis Superba without staking. Remember though that the presence of those side buds could otherwise extend a variety's time in flower an additional week or so, so you'll need to weigh whether you value a single larger upright bloom versus a longer show of smaller supplementally supported blooms.
There is one caveat: peonies require patience. Some varieties may not bloom, or bloom well, the first year -- or even several years -- after planting.
Once established, however, peonies will provide armfuls of cut flowers and are relatively drought tolerant. While peonies will reward you with larger blooms with occasional watering and applications of compost or fertilizer, where they're happy -- in a sunny spot with well-drained soil -- peonies will grow and bloom without any supplemental care. Peonies are extremely long-lived, even outliving the gardener who plants them, offering their heady fragrances to entice the next generation.
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Marcia Westcott Peck is a landscape designer (
) and Dennis Peck is the director of publications at The Oregonian/OregonLive.