Has anyone ordered from this company before? Karen, is this the one you talked about last fall; I couldn't find the string to check. If so, how were the roots? They have some pretty plants that I've not seen anywhere else but I've never ordered anything coming from Europe, any complications to be aware of?

I tried to order from them once 2 years ago. When I went to go to the post office to pick up the package, I was told it was mailed back to the sender. When I contacted the company, they said I had refused delivery (not very likely if you know me and peonies). Anyhow, the owner offered to send the same plants to me a second time if I paid the postage again ($25). At that point, those plants would be out of the ground too long and probably dead. Or if I paid $80 again, he would send new ones. I ended up with nothing and he still has my plants and my $80. I would be wary. You have no recourse with international companies if you aren't happy. He obviously doesn't care about happy customers. Other people say there roots are small compared to American roots, but do well when planted. Check out the ratings on DavesGarden.com.

I am sorry to hear that graycrna4u. I have not ordered from this company, Liz. Though I have seen their website occasionally, it seems to me the ordering process too complicated. There is the phytosanitary stuff that they need to issue in order to be acceptable into this country. The place that I really want to order from is Peonyshop in the Netherlands. They have a great selection of new peonies, their own introductions are just stunning! The two standouts for me are the double pink fernleaf and Sol Invictus.

Oh the pain the pain. Just saw Strawberry Wine and Smith Family Yellow. Put them in shopping cart at Adelman's (Smith Family Yellow was about $100 cheaper at Adelman's than Peonyshop), looked at them longingly then closed without ordering. sigh.

Kousa, you are correct. Peonyshop.com is a great site and had good reviews on DaveGarden.com. Their prices are great, but I think they cater more to people buying in bulk. If I remember correctly, there is a minimum $150.00 purchase. But if you are ordering a lot of plants from one place, that would not be an issue.

graycrna4u, you are also correct in that they cater to wholesales only. Their phytosanitary certificate cost alone is 125euro in addition to shipping cost, taxes, fees. The only way we can buy their plants is either through a group buy or some US plant vendors buy their plants in bulk and resell to them to us.

graycrna4u, how are your peony trees doing? Have they leafed out yet? I hope your peony tree with beautiful pink cupped blooms bloom for you this year. I looked for that at the treepeonygarden website last year to find it but it was not offered. It was named Palatial Pink or something similar to that?

I am glad you asked. All of my tree peonies from treepeonygarden.com are doing great and growing like crazy. They are starting to leaf out and they all have new scions that have broken ground. One has 5 new scions above ground. Lan Bao Shi has a bud on it. I will start to take pictures next week and post them.

I think your peonies were the first to bloom last year, too, graycrna4u. Looking forward to seeing your pictures!
Wouldn't it be interesting to start a spreadsheet on the varieties we all have here on the peony forum? Too late to do first emerged but have the various bloom times with the member zones? We could chart first bloom to last bloom by area, it'd be interesting to see how long each variety blooms and if it differs from area to area. If I weren't such a technophobe I'd volunteer to start something, I do plan to do something for mine this year but it'll be pretty simple.

I may try to do something like that with mine this spring. All of my previous pics are in my computer by date so that should not be difficult. I'll let you know how it goes.

I have all that info in my database, built and added to over several years. I would volunteer to do the techy stuff if I knew how to do it here.

I sent a tree mail to the admins for the peony forum to see if there's anything already in All Things Plants that we could use. Depending on what's there/possible we can talk about possibly doing this! Sounds like fun to me!

My tree peonies started blooming around 4/17 and lasted to around 4/28. Rockii tree peony around 4/30 and Shishifukujin?? around 5/6. My itohs started around 5/6 and lasted into the middle of May, and my herbaceous started around the middle of May until June. This year the plants are about 1 to 2 weeks behind last year.

I can certainly add my information to your database if there is some place that I can enter them. Though I think that we should follow the setup that was done by Michael Denny on the Peony Bloom Date Project. http://peonybloomdate.com/. He used Red Charm bloom date as being 0. And then any flowers that bloom before Red Charm is recorded as a minus number of days it blooms before Red Charm. And any peony that blooms after Red Charm, it is recorded as a positive number of days it blooms after Red Charm. For example, let's say Roselette blooms 15 days before Red Charm, then it would be recorded as -15. Let's say Elsa Sass blooms 10 days after Red Charm, it would be recorded as +10.

That is the system I use on the reports by individual peony. I put in a field that lists "Week 1" up to week 7. Then based on actual dates I indicate which 'week' they bloom. Then of course track the actual bloom dates. All those with no info on the report above are either newly planted last fall or have not bloomed for me yet.

Liz, who did you send your tree mail too? Dave? I would think they would welcome that type of information in the plant database or are you guys looking for something like a sticky to go in here with all that information?

If we added a field for 'week 1, week 2' etc and a start bloom, start grow, etc they could only be used in individuals journals since they would all vary. But if there was a canned report that allowed you to query on either the peony and listed by zone the week# and those dates, that would be interesting.

I thought I sent it to you, Diann! I'll resend. If there's something already out there we can use that would be great!

There is not much information on zone 9 so I will be glad to add my info to the database. My tree peonies have been blooming near the first day if spring the last few years and they did not disappoint this year. My noid red single bloomed march 17 and Koukamon bloomed March 20.

Do you grow herbaceous peonies too, Dianne? My husband and I are considering coastal Georgia as a retirement location, one of my reservations was my peonies, the area we're looking at shows as zone 8b. I'd love to hear what varieties you grow and how they do, if you have to go to extreme lengths to get them to bloom. It seems the lower eastern states have had much colder winters the last few but how do your peonies do in the more normal years?
There's also a forum member on gardenweb who's asking about herbaceous peonies in zone 9 if you're a member of both and want to help them with some experienced advice!

Liz - yes, I have herbaceous peonies as well as a few ITOHs. I have all of the old favorites such as Festiva maxima, red charm, coral charm, Sarah Bernhardt, etc. and they all bloom regularly. I am a lazy gardener and do not go to any extremes for any plant so no, I do not put ice cubes or anything like that on the peonies. I am lucky that my zone has just enough chill hours to allow me to grow them. We get maybe 14 days of below 32 degree nights. I'll post a list of my peonies if anyone is interested in what blooms in zone 9.