I wrote to Esther Simmons a while back to get a price list for the upcoming season. Got a reply from her yesterday and it was not good news for us—they've decided to retire from selling tree peonies. She said that shipping overseas last year was a nightmare for them—every country, not just the US, and they're just not up for it anymore. There has been rumor of them retiring for a few years now so it's not a total surprise but it hurts to lose a source as wonderful as they've been.
If anyone is interested in seeing their email response I'll certainly take a screen snap and share, just let me know. They did say they would continue to sell a herbaceous hybrid they developed and might eventually sell their breeding stock but I doubt if that would be shipped overseas.

Thanks for letting us know Liz. I feel really lucky that I have been able to buy a few over the past few years.

So many sources are retiring. It's really sad.

It is! I think I ended up with 23 root from them over the last 4 years, so glad I got all I could when I had the opportunity and concentrated on the ones that were unique to them. I'm pretty sure Nate got most of the unique ones to propagate for Solaris so I don't think theirs are completely lost to us, just lost for a while so he can build up stock.

Think Fina is gone as well after this year based on a conversation I had on messenger with Sam Finazzo. Guess we'll see if they have an online catalog this winter.

One that I've been waiting to get from Simmons was Cathedral Echo. Adelmans had it this Spring and I got it! I'm very happy I was able to get it.

Hopefully they will offer more in the coming years.

I got Firstlight NZ from Adelman's this year as well. You're going to love Cathederal Echo LG, it's gorgeous! A great one to get!

More sad news, but I don't blame them. I dealt with overseas shipping nightmare once and that was plenty. It took two full days of my time and my congress person to intervene.

Still grateful to have had a couple opportunities over the years to add cultivars from them. They are a good example of the benefits of starting seeds. Lots of their stuff came from Seidl seeds. The best is yet to come....

I am so very glad I was able to order from them this year!
I had been meaning to send Esther a thank you email, so I did 2 days ago.

Hopefully Solaris and Adelman's will have some of them in the near future.
I did see a good few had been in the search database on the Solaris website, but many listed as Irvine/Sutherland on the American Peony Society website were not in the Solaris search results.

Does anyone know of some other grower that might have them to possibly propagate in the future?