Peonies are landscape flowers supreme.  Only a few plants can make up a huge mass of color in your garden or general landscape.  They can live in the same place for years and years, they are perennials. Some have been known to live over 100 years in the same place.  They are fickle and tough at the same time.  If you give them what they want, they will reward you with beautiful huge flowers in great quantities.  If they are unhappy, they will survive, but they will not flower.

Peonies are propagated by root division.  Some peonies can be propagated by seed, but that is best left to the experts.  This is a very difficult task with few rewards, unless you have been smitten with peony passion (it happens), and a lot of patience.

The roots are of the rhizome family, like ginger, bamboo and….grass!

A large plant’s root can be divided into many smaller roots, and each root will grow a new plant which will be exactly the same as the parent plant.  Everything will be exactly the same, including and especially, the flowers. Depending on the size of the new root, and the number of “eyes” (the tiny growths that will become flowers and leaves in spring) it has, it should have a small shrub the first flowering season, and be a mature plant by the third season, with lots and lots of imperial flowers of different colors, shapes and sizes.