A good friend who is selling his property just gave me a large peony root from his garden. \u00a0The peony, which was billed as a white, single-flowered variety, bloomed last year, producing semi-double blossoms. \u00a0I dug a shallow, wide hole for the newcomer, as peonies resent being planted too deep. \u00a0Adding in a good helping of homemade compost, I finished with a wide collar of mulch.\u00a0 The root has several large, healthy \u201ceyes\u201d on it where new growth will eventually emerge. \u00a0Peonies often get the sulks for a year or two when they are transplanted, but I have high hopes of at least one bloom\u2014single or double–next spring.<\/p>\n
The gift reminded me of my college roommate\u2019s mother, a New England gardener, who has moved many times during her life. With every move she dug up her peonies and iris to take along to her new home. \u00a0Now my friend has some of those same iris growing in her New York City garden. \u00a0Next spring they will be joined by some Siberian iris divisions from my garden.<\/p>\n
I always find it comforting to be a small part of the great historical continuum of generous gardeners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A good friend who is selling his property just gave me a large peony root from his garden. \u00a0The peony, which was billed as a white, single-flowered variety, bloomed last year, producing semi-double blossoms. \u00a0I dug a shallow, wide hole for the newcomer, as peonies resent being planted too deep. \u00a0Adding in a good helping … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[433,434,432,431,302,435],"class_list":["post-644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","tag-dividing-iris","tag-dividing-peonies","tag-garden-gifts","tag-iris","tag-peonies","tag-planting-peonies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":645,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions\/645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}