Peony plants grow best in full sun but will tolerate some light afternoon shade. Enjoys full sun or part shade in rich, fertile, medium moisture, well-drained soils.The foliage remains attractive throughout summer until frost and often colors up in the fall. Reliable and vigorous, this herbaceous peony grows in a lush, bushy mound of glossy, deep green, divided foliage reaching up to 36 in.Recipient of the prestigious Award of Garden Merit of the Royal Horticultural Society.You may want to plant other cultivars with staggered bloom times (there are early, mid, and late blooming varieties) to extend your peonies season to up to 6 weeks. Blooming heavily in late spring - early summer, this late midseason peony will flower for approximately 7-10 days.Beautiful in the garden, it also makes outstanding cut flowers. Alexander Fleming' is a long-lasting Peony thanks to numerous side buds, which extend its blooming season. It produces large, deep rose-pink double flowers, which fade to a paler pink towards the edges. Alexander Fleming' (Paeonia lactiflora) is ravishing and fabulously fragrant. THE GARDEN phlox blooms madly in late July and August as the daylilies begin fading away.One of Europe's favorites, award-winner Peony 'Dr. In tiny gardens in town I doubt you would want phlox, since they take as much space as peonies and have a somewhat weedy air to them even when well grown.īut in wide borders or, for that matter, in a solid bed, nothing is more festive in late summer, provided there is full sun, deep soil and plenty of water available. Phloxes usually fail in half-shady places, but where tomatoes flourish, the phlox does very well. Pink, white, crimson, scarlet and purple are the main colors. I do not, myself, despise the magenta phlox (which is what you often get if you let the garden hybirds go to seed and grow up) but most gardeners sneer at it. Refined people speak of screaming red or screaming yellow flowers, though equally garish. This time of year you see phlox plants in cans at garden centers, and if these are planted now and watered well they will bloom freely this summer. In case you wondered, the lavendar and purple varieties like 'Amethyst' and 'Russian Violet' are distinct shades of violet and are not magenta. White phloxes are especially admired at night when they show up well. It is not so big and bouncy as the later kinds, like 'Mount Fujiyama' or 'White Admiral.' 'Miss Lingard' is an early sort that blooms off and on, about knee height, and vastly admired. Pinks tend toward salmon - yellow in the pink - like 'Sir John Falstaff' or toward rose - blue in the pink - like 'Charles Durant' and 'B. Symons-Jeune.' One of the handsomest of all phloxes is 'Dodo Hanbury Forbes,' which is a pink with a trifle of blue in it and passes for clear pink. The standard red phlox nowadays is 'Starfire,' which is scarlet, but there are also rose-reds like 'Windsor.' It consorts better with the rose pinks than the salmons, however. Two common nuisances with phlox are red spider mites and mildew. I prefer to ignore both (as who does not) and often they are no problem, especially if the phlox are given good sunny open positions and rich soil to begin with. More distressing are the eelworms which make the plants so stunted they are not worth growing. They are avoided by growing new plants from cuttings, instead of dividing the roots. Greedy gardeners have trouble thinning their phloxes, but the best results (the flowers are larger and showier) come from pinching out all but five of the stems. (Otherwise it is a nuisance to keep them watered enough to prevent wilting.)Įvery third year the clumps should be divided, either after the bloom season ends or in spring when the new shoots are not more than three inches high. Peonies that are not well-established (from roots planted only last October) usually do not bloom their first spring, or, if they do bloom, they produce flowers not up to snuff. The following spring they will increase in stature.Ī thing to be cautious about is fertilizing peonies.
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