Cityncountry, I'm glad you're going to go ahead and try a tree peony. I believe that, like me, you'll be hooked on them in no time. I picked up a 'Feng Dan' on impulse at HD late one season and have been very pleased with it. It is not, so far as I know, a fancy variety, but the blossoms are lovely in early spring and it seems hardy as can be ... with leaf buds often just beginning to unfurl as early as February here along the New Jersey shore. I used to panic and protect it with a tipi of clear solar pool cover (which I'd have to remove during the day, of course, then replace at night) ... even putting some jugs of water in there to help with the temperature. This year that tipi was just too far back in the shed for me to access, so it was do or die for Dan ... and it's fine. Aside from having provided an ever-increasing number of blossoms every spring, this plant, for a small investment, has given me the courage to one day try a more expensive variety. FYI, our soil is very sandy, amended with homemade compost, shredded leaves and mushroom compost. Light conditions are mostly dappled shade with periods of full sun. Good luck and please keep us posted!

Glad this got bumped to the top again. I thought maybe someone would want to hear how my Costco purchase has gone. I bought 3 TP's from Costco the end of Feb and planted them together in a big pot kept in garage. I was a little confused about Japanese vs Chinese in my earlier post - the Costco tree peonies were Chinese - don't know what Van B sells. I planted out the Cinnabar Rampart (Zhu Sha Lei) about 1 week ago. When I took it out of the pot it had begun developing new roots - good sign. It had begun to leaf out and looks quite healthy. The nice folks at A&D Peonies in WA had told me to plant it before it leafed out if I could - so tried to hurry to get it in the ground. Now its covered with a box as the snow is falling and not expected to quit till tomorrow. My favorite nursery told me that peony leaves would freeze on the tips and look uglier than normal if they weren't covered so my yard looks like a warehouse with boxes everywhere on the herbaceous peonies. The 2 not planted yet are P. Suffruticosa Hu's Red and Paeonia ostii White Phoenix. The P. ostii was a lot later than the suffruticosa's in developing leaf buds and its not as healthy a plant - the stems appear to be largely dead and the new growth is coming from the bottom and from the rootstock. There is a lot of conflicting information on the internet about P. ostii - some say its the easiest to grow, others say its susceptible to diseases and a weak plant. But the picture was pretty! Now I'm waiting for the snow to melt so I can plant out the other 2.

This is one of the things that I disagree with peonyman about even though he is better than I am at grafting. If you still have the stems try two or more things with them. If you have access to peony roots that could be used for grafting try it. Just because something does not work for one person it might for another if the conditions are right. Remember to graft the old wood to the new root. Second as an experiment get some of the crystals that are sold for water retention that expand when water is added to them. Wally world has them as do florists, your neighborhood nursery might also. Get two or three containers, I would use glass jars. Put the crystals in the containers to one add just water, the second add water plus aspirin or pieces of willow twigs, and to the third add water and use a small(less than 1/4 teaspoon) amount of fertilizer. Add the stems after cutting off the leaves and new stems. Put the jars in a dark warm area and see what happens. My thought is that if the containers are kept in a dark warm area for about two months and then brought out to the light roots should form along the stems. Since I heard of this experiment on other hard to root plants I have been wanting to try it. However with my deer and rabbits I have no stems this spring to try anything using old wood. I would like to report that many of the tps that were eaten are sending up really healthy new stems.

Hi Al, thanks for your thoughts. I was just planting in the bed this afternoon and the soil is not compacted. Moisture seemed quite good throughout. This is one bed that we water fairly frequently when necessary since aside from tree peonies I plant a lot of my "special" plants there. The bed gets more care than most. I don't mulch this bed much because unfortunately I have many squirrels and chipmunks that really like this bed since it's fairly close to the birdfeeders. There's always a handful digging around the bed. And then I also have turkeys (many of them) that like to frequent the bed as well and they do quite a bit of scratching. So, whenever I've mulched, the animals just trash it and fling it all over the place. Maybe I'll just have to try to mulch deeper and more often to see if that will cause a change in where they're putting their roots. And you brought up temperature changes, so maybe it is even more important for me to mulch in the fall to help with the temp fluctuations we have up here. Maybe the key is mulch. I'll just have to deal with those critters! I still ask myself why I plant my most expensive, special purchases in there as I watch the squirrels and huge turkeys tromp around! They surprisingly don't do much damage to the physical plants. Thanks again.