Peonies: The Complete Season Guide

Peonies have the shortest season and the largest following of any flower we sell, and almost every problem people have with them comes from one of three things: buying at the wrong stage, expecting them outside their window, or not knowing that the ants are supposed to be there.

The Window Is Six Weeks and It Does Not Move

In this region the peony season runs from roughly the middle of May into the first week of June. That is the whole of it for local material.

The global season is longer because production follows the cool weather up and down the hemispheres — Israeli and Chilean crops arrive early, Dutch and Alaskan crops run late, and cold-stored stems extend the tail. A determined florist can find peonies for a substantial part of the year at a substantial price.

What cannot be found out of season is quality. Counter-season peonies are smaller, tighter, less scented and considerably more expensive, and they frequently fail to open at all. A couple planning an October wedding around peonies is planning around a flower that will disappoint them, and the honest advice is to use garden roses instead, which give a similar blowsy form at a fraction of the cost in autumn.

Buy at Marshmallow Stage

The single most useful thing to know. Squeeze the bud gently between finger and thumb.

A rock-hard bud that does not give at all is too tight. It has been cut too early and there is a real chance it never opens — this is the commonest way people waste money on peonies.

A bud that gives slightly, with the feel of a marshmallow, is correct. It will open over three to five days and give you the full display.

A soft bud showing colour and loosening petals is already opening, which is fine if you need them tomorrow and poor value if you wanted a week.

The Ants Are Not a Problem

Peony buds exude a sugary nectar and ants come for it. The old belief that peonies need ants to open is not true — they open perfectly well without them — but the ants do no harm either.

Do not spray them. Hold the stems upside down and shake, or dunk the heads briefly in water, and they leave. Ants indoors are a nuisance rather than a threat to the flower.

The Types, and Why It Matters

Three groups, and they behave differently.

Herbaceous peonies are the standard cut flower — the ones that die back to the ground each winter. Sarah Bernhardt, the ubiquitous pale pink, is one of these, along with Coral Charm, Duchesse de Nemours and Festiva Maxima.

Tree peonies are woody shrubs with enormous flowers, rarely sold as cut stems, and very expensive when they are.

Itoh or intersectional peonies are hybrids between the two, with strong stems and a colour range including yellows that herbaceous types cannot produce.

For cut flowers, the practical division is by form: single, semi-double, double and bomb. Doubles and bombs are the huge blowsy ones people picture, and they are heavier and shorter-lived. Singles last longer and read as far more modern.

Getting Them to Open

Warm water accelerates it. A tight bunch in water at around 38 to 43°C — comfortably warm to the hand — will open noticeably sooner than one in cold. This shortens overall vase life, which is an acceptable trade when you need them at their peak on a known day.

Cold does the reverse, so a bunch opening too fast for an event can be held back in a cool room.

Remove the lower foliage aggressively. Peony leaves are large and drink heavily, competing directly with the flower, and stripping them is the difference between a bud that opens and one that stalls.

Vase Life, Honestly

Five to seven days from a marshmallow bud. Two or three from one bought open.

They are heavy and they get heavier as they open, so the stems need support — a vessel with a neck that gathers them, rather than a wide bowl where they will splay and then collapse outward.

And they are ethylene-sensitive, so keep them away from fruit.

Storing Them for Later

Peonies are one of the few flowers that store genuinely well, which is how the season gets extended commercially.

Cut at tight bud, stripped of foliage, wrapped dry in paper and laid flat in a refrigerator, they will hold for two to three weeks and can then be brought out, re-cut and hydrated. They open normally afterward.

This is worth knowing if you want peonies for a date just after the local season ends — buy at the end of May, store, and use in mid-June. Keep them away from food, since ethylene from fruit and vegetables will ruin them.

What to Buy Instead, and When

If the peony look is what matters rather than the flower itself, three things approximate it convincingly.

Garden roses in the fuller varieties give the same many-petalled cup, are available most of the year, and cost less out of peony season — the register of our Mix Garden Rose.

Double ranunculus in the Clooney types give the same density at smaller scale, in late winter and spring, which is the window immediately before peonies arrive — our Mixed Ranunculus covers it.

And for the peony season itself, our Peony and Ranunculus Bouquet combines both while the overlap lasts, which is roughly a fortnight in May and the best two weeks of the flower year in this region.