Companion planting with peonies in your garden

Peonies have been a staple at the farm since Mom lined the path to the front porch with three rows of transplants gifted from the neighbors when she moved back to Illinois. White, pink and magenta rose burst open each Memorial Day weekend. Though we waited an extra week in this unseasonably record-breaking cold and wet gardening year, Mom’s peonies came this week, inspiring the perfect foundation for a successive show of blooms March to September.

So, you may ask, just how do you create continuous color? Just like relay planting in the vegetable garden for continuous eating, companion planting in the perennial bed promises full-season beauty and a consistent supply of cut flower stems for the parlor.

Peonies are a great anchor in a perennial bed since they are one the earliest to break through over-wintered mulch. Though planting bare roots takes a bit of patience in getting new cultivars established, once flourishing, the fast growers provide a layer of shade from late May through fall, long after their intoxicating blooms are spent.

As we install another dozen cultivars of peonies on our homestead, filling in the 3-foot, in-row spacing (and up to 5 feet for larger varieties) has become a welcome challenge to balance steady growth and glorious wonder as we go.

In Mom’s original bed, tufts of muscari come even earlier than the peonies, laying out a lush, vibrant green carpet for grape hyacinth to come and go before the stems perk up in April. Of course, they almost went before they even bloomed by my own hands the first year I weeded and thought it was invasive grass! Luckily mom hovered over in protection. Today, the few spotty starts have become a solid row between the lines of peonies.

Another suspicious spring resident, allium, appears as lanky rabbit ears or clumps of slender, rounded tip leaves easily mistaken for daffodils. Billing up to $16 a bulb, these fall-planted bulbs are best shown in mass plantings, alternating early-, mid- and late-bloomer installs season to season. With about seven distinct height and bloom times, varying the varieties of allium in succession from edge to edge supplies perfect spherical balance on the bed’s horizon from early May until the end of August. Purple Sensation offers daffodil mimickers teasing a wait-and-see approach to shooting up a single stiff stem for early spring balls of violet joy dotting the horizon of rapidly filling out peony bushes. Fading just as the peony buds open, Millenium allium await their call to stage for a late-summer circle soiree.

When considering vegetable and herb companions, remember that peonies love potassium, the K in the numbers of N-P-K ratio of garden fertilizers. Potash is a great source of potassium, as well as homemade compost rich in chopped banana peels and ground-up avocado pit.

Vegetable plants use potassium when they put on fruit after leafing out such as cucumbers, squash and tomatoes. Since peony color fast forwards into hot summer temperatures, sun-lovers like sweet or hot pepper plants are a favorable side show. Bulb fennel, a lover of cool, moist soil, is another excellent companion for peonies. The frilly, upright growth habit tucks intermittently and offset between the 3-foot in-row spacing of traditional peonies, putting on plenty of growth in the early, cool spring to keep up with the canopy of budding peony. By the time spent peony blooms are trimmed back and foliage pruned, a third from the tips, fennel has a foothold and can bush out atop peony foliage patiently waiting to bronze out when fall temperatures drop. When it is time to harvest the bulb in the fall, peony bushes can be trimmed to the ground at the same time.

A royal symbol of good fortune and happy marriage, peonies evoke exquisite flair and short-lived treasure.

I've been known to select cultivars on name alone as often as based on years of research, flavor and disease resistance.

Our venture toward a flower farm includes several new installations of a variety of peonies. I had been readily prepared for the adage, "The first year they sleep, the second year they creep and the third year they leap."

But, here to cheer me up in a potted plant awaiting permanent installation, first to bloom this season was a Honey Gold peony. Looking like a wispy daisy, this frilly, flat bloom and a protruding gold center evokes a conversation far from peony talk. Yes, I considered it the magic of the greenhouse that had this first-year root bloom for me.

Don’t mistake companion planting with compact planting. Overcrowding a bed can lead to soil-born fungus. If your stems are blackening at the base or whole stems are browning and falling over in wilt, your crown may be infected with botrytis, a fungal disease particularly prominent in wet seasons. Remove infected tissue immediately, create plenty of airflow and at season’s end, trim the crown a few inches below the soil surface.

You can choose peonies by bloom type: Single, double, Japanese, anemone, semi-double, full double or bomb. Anemone blooms such as Honey Gold and Do Tell varieties are flat, frilly blooms resembling wild flowers. Herbaceous peonies bloom seven to 10 days while Itoh peonies, or intersectional peonies, have blooms that last up to four weeks with upward of 50 blooms per plant. Peony trees are different altogether and considered a woody shrub.

When it comes to placement, choose wisely. Think long-lived. Generally, peonies resent being uprooted. Heritage varieties have been known to grow in the same spot for a hundred years, producing new eyes on the same root system year after year as long as the environment is clean and soil has plenty of organic matter. Newer hybrids may not last as long but are bred for cut flowers and longer bloom time during a single season.

The American Peony Society has dedicated an entire registry of cultivars available for fanatics of all things Paeonia. Visit americanpeonysociety.org to learn more.

HOLLY KOSTER is a University of Illinois Extension Master Gardener who resides in Grand Ridge. She can be reached by emailing tsloup@shawmedia.com; via Twitter, @gardenmaiden9; or on Facebook, facebook.com/gardenmaiden9.