Peonies.

Yesterday, my husband came home from work early and took over the role of coordinating our children's hectic schedule of Saturday activities......so that I could flit off on a tour organised by Karen Wagner, a very talented garden designer around town, to Weston Farm in the countryside just outside Hobart to see Richard and Belinda Weston's heartstoppingly beautiful peonies in full bloom:

I dressed accordingly, digging out a very old flowery Collette Dinnigan skirt that I wore to a lunch the day after our wedding.....almost 14 years ago. Think that's old, the Pringle of Scotland knit that I wore is part of a twinset that used to be owned by my aunt and by my calculations it must be almost fifty years old:

Look how fab it all looked out amongst the paddocks full of peonies:

Yet again, I matched....see:

On this occasion, I didn't have a compliant husband to take photos for me and frankly, I was too embarrassed to ask anybody else......in case they thought that I had been sniffing something other than the heady scent of peony flowers.

With access to real live peony farmers, I didn't hold back and asked a million questions. At one stage, I shamelessly pulled out my iPhone and showed Richard photos of the peonies growing in my garden in the quest to try and determine which varieties they actually are. Now let me properly introduce you to what could possibly be 'Adolphe Rousseau':

and what most definitely is 'Monsieur Jules Elie':

As for the rogue peony in my garden that has caused me no end of angst because it hasn't flowered for five long years....well, we narrowed the causes down to being that the plant could have been too small when we bought it (beware, always check the roots and the crown as there must be a minimum of three nodules to guarantee fast flowing) which means that it has needed the five years just to get to flowering size, or my husband could have planted it too deeply (the crown needs to sit just below the soil level). So, I'm going to feed it with lime around the periphery of the plant in autumn (never put fertiliser on the actual plant), which is prime fertilising time.....and hope for the best....in spring next year. If that doesn't finally elicit a bloom, then I can dig it up in autumn the year after and re plant it.

And KAR from The House A Blog Built, as promised I quizzed the peony farmer all about growing peonies on the Adelaide plains. The upshot being that it's no problem growing them in the hills (yet somehow I don't think that you want to move just to grow peonies after you have put in so much dedicated work on renovating your gorgeous home), yet down on the plains you might just be lucky if you plant in a cool, shady place that gets some direct sunlight. It's worth a try, yet he did clarify that as peonies originated in Mongolia, Russia and Japan......Adelaide might just be too hot.

After tiptoeing through the peonies, there was an utterly magnificent afternoon tea put on in their glorious back garden:

I went home with a serious dose of garden envy....so much so that this morning I was out in my bathrobe demonstrating a new dedication to my garden by deadheading roses and weeding........at the ungodly hour of 8am.

Rx

PS If you live in Hobart, Belinda from Weston's Farm sells peonies in season on Sunday's at the Farm Gate Market.