APS Meeting

18 years ago

This years meeting of the American Peony Society is being held at the Sheraton Bloomington Hotel, 7800 Normandale Blvd, Bloomington, MN 55439 which is near the intersection of I494 and Hwy 100. A flower show is open to the public Saturday June 7 from 1pm to 5pm and the Sunday June 8, 9am-4pm. I would suggest viewing the flowers Saturday if you can while they are still fresh.

On Saturday there will also be three lectures open to the public including on on photographing peonies and other flowers.

For members there will be tours of several nurseries and private gardens along with dinner and auction.

For the general public this is a great chance to view a great number of peonies and to compare the hugh blooms from certain areas, Pacific Northwest, to ones from other parts of the country.

Several growers will be there to discuss peonies with you and you can pick up their catalogs. If you want to place orders for plants at the show you may do so, but it must be outside of the show floor. Bring a notebook and write down what and where you want the plants from then go to the lobby and write out the order to give or mail to the nursery. A word from one who buys too much you might want to take home to review your place before ordering.

As usual I will be there and look forward to chatting with everyone.

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Comments (3)

amulet
18 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
So please tell us all about the meeting. Did you go on the farm tours on Friday? Did you purchase any new peonies?

I would have loved to have gone, but MN is kind of far from NC. Maybe next year.

Who was the Gold Medal Winner for 2008? Did they say where next years convention will be?
amulet
18 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
Did anyone go to the APS meeting this year? Can you tell us about it?
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Original Author
18 years ago
last modified: 11 years ago
Sorry for taking so long to answer. The meeting lived up to my expectations. I will not give names if you received the bulletin you will know who they were.

Good, Had good informational speakers. I am not into flower arranging so I missed De Yuan talk. I have heard him speak both formally and informally at a friend's. Some of his ideas I feel do not apply to every region however I do believe that some of his nomenclature will be around for along time. I do not accept his Obvata family grouping but DNA will probably prove him correct.

The first day was access to a private garden, where although the herbaceous were just starting to bloom the trees were just finishing. The garden had a wonderful collection of woodland plants with thousands of hostas playing a major role. This was for early arriving members.
The tour of the originator of Black Hawk was an eye opener. Being used to the come look at my plants and see what I am using to breed group, employees were stationed to see that no one took any plant material. I do understand that in this time of tissue culture a small portion of a leaf can be cloned but I felt it could have been handled as if the people were stationed to provide information vs. as guards. After the tour a nice lunch was provided.

The tours on Friday were very nice. I was able to see several of the older varieties used for breeding. The first venue was primarily an open field of peonies due to the rain some of the labels of plants that I was interested had been smeared so I could not read. The breeder had several singles in a range of ivory to peach that I thought had promise. However since they were 3+ ft would not fit in for any future breeding of mine own. They did have a nice selection of plants for sale, including several that I had not seen available.

The second stop was the originator of Black Hawk. I was at first, put off by the employees acting as guards to prevent any plant material from being removed, I do understand with the use of tissue culture for peonies. I am used to having free access to the fields but with as large a group, several buses, I can understand the concern but I personally thought that it could have been handled by the employees acting guides and giving information then stopping anyone that took material. For beekeepers, several of the new unnamed as yet singles were just covered with very, very happy honeybees. Several large boxes were near the field as part of the farm is an organic produce and plant nursery. We were allowed about 15 minutes to check out the nursery, unscheduled because we were early. Yes I purchased a Laotian tomato and a pepper. They had a large selection of tomatoes and peppers from all over the world.

The group broke up for dinner. Those that were displaying peonies started prep work. I ended up in the bar with a group from the West Coast talking about plans.

Saturday morning the prep for the show started in earnest. The Minneapolis club had arranged for a group of volunteers to take the blooms in vases/jars to the correct tables display. The blooms that were not suitable for display were made available for the floral design part of the show and for sale to the public. After the show arrangements had been made to distribute the flowers to various veterans hospitals and homes with the rest being distributed to various locations. This is one of the things that should be thought of during the planning.

Sunday, the members were provided in their packets a list of open gardens that they could visit. I was only able visit four. But one of those had a wonderful collection of all kinds of plants but the lady of the house was a noted hybridizer of hostas. Yes, although I like the large ones I only have space for the four true dwarfs I came home with.

Next years had been planned for Boston but the last I hear it was going to Mansfield, OH. If you can go and the site is the same as a couple of years ago visit the nursery. I came home with a large amount of excellent looking plants.