to Plant Now 
A Round-up of the 
Best Peonies 
THE EMINENT DESIRABILITY OF THIS HERBACEOUS 
PERENNIAL-WHEN AND HOW TO PLANT-THE 
OPINIONS OF PEONY GROWERS AS TO THE BEST 
TEN OF THE ALMOST INNUMERABLE VARIETIES 
Photographs by N. R. Graves, Chas. Jones and the Author 
O NE frequently conies upon the statement that if such and 
such a person were to be exiled to an uninhabited island 
for the remainder of his life he would choose to take with him 
such and such a book. Merely as a form of emphasis, and trust¬ 
ing that such a choice will never be thrust upon me, under the 
same circumstances I believe I should choose, among the thou¬ 
sand and one flowering - plants, the peony. Admitting the diffi¬ 
culty of a choice between this and the rose, I hold that the scales 
would turn in favor of the former, for on an uninhabited isle I 
should have far too much to do to find time to keep up the neces¬ 
sarily incessant warfare against the rose’s many enemies. The 
peony, on the other hand, by reason of its freedom from disease 
and the attacks of insect pests would bring only tbe rewards of 
its wonderful beauty and fragrance. 
It should need no argument to convince anyone who has had 
even the least experience in trying to obtain presentable borders 
or masses of planting around the house, that the great bulk of de¬ 
pendence should be put upon the perennials. It is merely an ag¬ 
gravation to spend hours in planting seeds of annuals in carefully 
arranged plots, only to find, in midsummer, that many of them 
have not come up at all and that others have brought clashes of 
color into the scheme that should never have occurred. On the 
other hand the perennials, such as the peony, foxglove, larkspur, 
phlox, and such 
other old stand¬ 
bys, may be de¬ 
pended upon ab- 
solutely to come 
up year after year 
in the same place 
and in the same 
colors. 
Admitting the 
superiority of the 
perennials, w h y 
should so m u c h 
stress be laid 
upon the peony ? 
It is a difficult 
task to hold a 
brief for any one 
flowering plant; 
there are so many 
others that may 
lay claim to supe¬ 
riority in one or 
more particulars. 
It would be fool¬ 
ish, therefore, to 
Marechal MacMahon, a deep rich red, illustrates one of the most 
beautiful types—a cup-shaped bloom with broad guard petals 
forming a saucer. The white bloom is Festiva Maxima, probably 
the most popular white, with carmine edges on the central petals. 
Incidentally, it is also one of the cheapest to buy. 
advocate the use of any one flowering plant to the exclusion of 
others, but what I do want to do is to emphasize as strongly as 
possible the fact that the peony is something without which you 
should not attempt to make a garden. 
In the first place the peony is very easily grown; second, when 
well established it is a permanent feature of the garden ; third, the 
peony is perfectly hardy wherever apples can be grown; fourth, 
the blooms are extremely large, showy and in a variety of colors, 
from white through pinks and reds to purple; fifth, most varieties 
are fragrant; sixth, the plant has practically no enemies, so that 
neither spraying nor hand-picking of insects is necessary; seventh, 
as a cut flower the peony is as valuable as it is for landscape 
effects in the garden. Surely this is a formidable array of advan¬ 
tages to be placed over against two very small disadvantages: 
the peony multiplies rather slowly; and, second, many varieties 
produce such large blooms that the slender stems are not strong- 
enough to stand erect and the bloom is beaten down to the ground 
and ruined by rains. 
The latter fault of the peony may be overcome or avoided in 
two ways: first, by the selection of varieties that are notably 
strong in stem; second, by some mechanical device or support 
such as a wire hoop on three legs, similar to the supports that are 
sold for tomato plants. 
A two-year-old dormant root ready to go 
into the ground. The pinkish eyes are 
barely visible at the top 
