Hello folks,

It was a tree peony extravaganza here this memorial day. The gardens at my parents' place have been getting to be too much to maintain, so this weekend we consolidated flower beds and salvaged what we could from the beds that have gone to weeds and been overtaken by the lawn. The main attraction was dividing and re-locating a specimen of "Hana-kisoi" that has been in cultivation by my family for half a century. After 50 years, the root of whatever it had originally grafted onto had never died. The tree peony had developed it's own roots and grown into a very large clump, yet the host root had also continued to grow and formed a very strange and freakish looking mass in the shape of an inverted salad bowl roughly 12 inches across. After all of these years, we finally separated the host and the now rooted and long established clone. From the clump, we made four divisions. One went into a cleaned and restored flower bed, while the other three divisions were relocated to my house. On the way home, I stopped at a unique gourmet food/specialty garden nursery place called Adams' Fairacre Farms in Dutchess County NY. Low and behold they had lots of young grafted tree peonies for sale for $39.99 (~$40). I purchased one variety listed simply as "lavender", and another labeled "Shima-Nishiki". So now, I have FIVE tree peonies at my house. Here is the catch. I have no yard. In fact, I have less than 64 sq ft of in ground space TOTAL, and it is almost entirely occupied by trees. I do all of my gardening in large containers. I have read from other posts, and websites, that tree peonies have been grown in containers for centuries, and I currently have an Itoh Peony (Bartzella) that I have grown for three years now in a 20 gallon pot.

My question(s):

1. Are 20 and 30 gallon pots large enough for a tree peony?

2. My climate is zone 7. Is this going to be too cold for a tree peony grown in a pot? In my experience, container plants experience effectively two zones colder temperatures in the winter from the perspective of the roots. I am solidly zone 7, but I have never had anything survive more than a few winters in a pot that wasn't hardy to at least zone 5.

Other details:

I can accommodate sun, partial shade, and full shade. The Bartzella producd 8 blossoms this year and has been grown in full afternoon sun. I hear tree peonies are more shade tolerant.

Garden 2018 · More Info

Garden 2018 · More Info

Cheers,

Werner