Thank you. What do you mean by saying that" it was slow to recover"?

I have to remove mine from their current bed completely. If I divided them I would get 20 out of one, what would be muuuuuch too many.

I'm not sure why a peony wouldn't survive a transplant. They are tough, tough plants! And a division can be as simple as just halving the size of the current plant......you do not have to take it smaller than that.......unless you want to.

Divided or not, moving peonies can often result in delaying blooming for a season or two until they get re-established. That may be what woody was referring to with "slow to recover".

The peony I was thinking about in the ‘slow to recover’ scenario was one I moved years ago from a neighbour’s very sandy soil to heavy clay soil in the garden at a local long term care seniors home. So, in addition to the usual delayed blooming the gg48 referred to, it took an extra year to adapt to the radically different growing conditions!

And, as gg48 also mentioned, I was thinking only of dividing it in half so you have a fall-back piece to work with if the first chunk is unhappy with where you put it.

Sometimes when a peony has been in the ground for a long time the roots will become hollow. One of the members on here several years ago posted pictures of the roots that he found in digging a really old peony. It really did not have any divisible roots as people think of when they think of divisions. The topic came up on another site and I sent him a message asking how many of the pieces lived and the answer was none. If he had simply moved the clump he might have had it live but separated into pieces none did.

His pictures did make me wonder if the black decay like matter in the cavities was a natural fertilizer that keeps older 50-100+ peonies so lush.

Thanks. My Peonies are far from being that old. I planted them only about 10 years ago from divisions from my other Peonies. They are very happy plants, big and blooming profusely year after year. They are going to be moved to another bed with similar soil and other conditions. So I understand there is no problem with doing that.

When I moved my peonies (10+ years ago), they had been in place about 7 - 10 years, and each one of the little blighters fell apart when I dug them up; instead of 9 peonies, I had about 50. I planted as many as I could fit, and some of them were just one or two pips, but they all lived. Some of them took a couple of years to get back to blooming, but most of them bloomed the next year and haven't stopped since. Obviously, you don't HAVE to plant the little pieces, but they will live and bloom if you do.

Thanks. The thing is, I don't want more Peonies. I know how to divide them, I did it in the past, now I have as many as I need and am only curious how they would perform if I planted the whole dug-up plants.

Perhaps someone on here can remember which one but Don H and other people have told me that the root clump is one way that they can tell if a plant is either Sarah B. or Karl. I think it is Sarah B. If you have her the root clump will fall apart and there is nothing you can do about it.

I did something similar, I moved 4 (immature no flowers yet) peonies to a different place. 3/4 seem fine, the fourth looks just a little thirsty. So I think as long as you don't do it when it's too hot they'll be fine.

I’ve transplanted whole peonies without a problem. I have found that they bloom the next year provided that you are very careful when digging them up. I essentially dig them by hand instead of using a shovel. It takes more time but the end result is a peony with very few broken pieces.

My Peonies have very sturdy roots that will not fall apart, I know that from the time when I divided them 10 or so years ago. I am going to move them in a month or so, so it should not be too hot anymore. And I will dig them up very carefully. Thank you everybody.