Behold! The glory and the mesmerizing beauty of the Itoh peony. I’ve been looking for a specimen to put on display here, as the tree peony we currently have is one of those heavy-headed varieties which gets so top heavy each bloom requires staking, and I’m not into that kind of maintenance.
The exquisite form of the tree peony has long charmed me, and I’m not sure why it’s taken so long to come around to trying my hand at them again. Their reputation of being finicky an difficult to transplant has already been upended here – the one we have was moved twice and still flowers. The foliage also tends to stay perfectly intact and unmarred by mildew, unlike their herbaceous cousins, which don’t fare that well in the humid summers we usually have.
The Itoh peony is actually a hybrid of an herbaceous peony and a tree peony, and reportedly combines the best qualities of both. I’m working on finding the perfect placement for such a beauty…
