| January 27th. We have finally posted the largest listing of peony species in the U.S. Many are threatened or endangered in their native habitats and these precious plants deserve a home in special gardens where they can be preserved for future generations. Many are sought for use in the rennaisance of peony breeding that is now bringing a whole new pallet of colorful peonies to our gardens. If you have a special spot in your heart and garden for these delicate and beautiful botanical wild peonies please consider adopting one for your garden this year while the offering is so great. We list the species only every 3 to 4 years since they are slower to increase and we are shifting to controlled hand pollination to keep up with demand and take the pressure off the wild populations. January 15th. Still no snow but having a great time taking walks listening to the birds get tuned up for spring. The lady owl is making a sweet song mostly every night. Still trying to find what tree she is hanging out in - but of course she doesn't want me or any pesky crows to know where she is making a roost. Glad to hear her though since I know she will be helping to keep the little mice in check. Miss seeing the fox tracks across the fields without the snow - but i know they are there by the name tags the young ones chew on. Keeps me busy in the winter making replacements. Enjoy the winter as spring is surely on the way!  December 12, 2012 The past few days I've been updating and creating all new peony presentations and it has been like living in a field of blooming peonies with all the colorful images on my screen as I select, size and edit them for presentation. You'll want to check the new descriptions and titles out in a week or so after I've had a chance to test drive them with some peony enthusiasts friends for critique over the holidays.
December 7th, 2011 A crisp white snow barely covers the fields and the bright blue skys that come with the cold weather are just beautiful this time of year. Peony enthusiasts looking for rarer peonies have outdone themselves this year by ordering all of Late Windflower, Magnolia Flower, Marie Fischer, Nosegay and White Cap already! This week we are working on our peony and garden talk presentations and firming up some speaking engagment commitments. We hope you will take a look at the colorful peony photos and send an order in for some that speak to your heart. We wish you all a happy holiday season and encourage you to take some time to enjoy your family and friends. November 20th The 2012 Online Peony Catalog was launched and orders started coming in the same day. The early bird gets the worm! Since many of the items that are ordered early are the rare or limited items folks must have their plant radar on for the first hint of the update. We've had our first significant snow and it marks the turning point from outdoor to indoor work for us. Preparing new field labels, doing peony species research and getting garden talk presentations updated and ready to go! We wish alll our gardening friends a great holiday season. We find the winter passes swiftly before we are out in the fields again so we look forward to enjoying the interaction with gardeners and friends in the next few months. September 1 - Ocotber 10th. The harvest season started well with good soil moisture which ended in about an 8 week stretch of no rain to only nuisance rains that made it muddy to dig but did little to moisten the soil. This means that if you have had a dry fall be sure and give a good deep watering to your peonies so they can root properly and develop strong flower buds this fall for next seasons bloom. We finished shipping orders out 1 week ahead of schedule allowing us to get Last Chance peonies out a whole two weeks early. We hope folks get them planted and don't let them sit in their garage. Each day out of the ground is lost vigor for the following year. June 23, 2011 We have had a few days of wonderful soak in the ground rainfalls that were perfect as we move into the summer and the plants shift from flower production to bulking up thier roots for fall harvest. With the extended cool periods with high humidity we have had folks sending us some photos of their gardens where peonies are showing signs of powdery mildew which covers the leaves and cuts down on the plants ability to make food from the sun. The worst cases are where peonies are planted in partial shade. Remember peoines do best in full sun. Plants that were overcrowded. Leave aboout 3 feet between plants for them to grow to full maturity. And lastly thsoe folks who are heavy on the liquid fertilizer are seeing worse symptoms, so cut back to a bulb food only applied in the fall as recommended on the package. Peonies are designed to store food so if they are over-fertilized you will run into more disease problems especially if you are not using a fertilizer with a rating similar to a 8-16-32 formulation. Finished compost applied in the late summer and worked into the top inch of soil will break down and the nutrients will be slowly available and is a good thing for your plants. Send us some pictures of your succes this past sesaon we'd love to see them. June 1, 2011 Finally some sunshine and a little heat. The double fernleaf peony is blooming a whole month late this year! Hybrids are starting to bloom and color is showing up more each day. The peony Bob won the Grand Champion at the Convention this year. A lovely near black-red double hybrid that was stunning. We have a few left after the convention goers raced to get orders in. The owners of the winning bloom will be sold out for a couple years they say. Congratulations to Therese and Abel of Brooks Gardens on their win! Seedlings blooming for the first time this year are showing some wonderful promise. Hope to share some photos soon. May 2011 - It has been cold, cold, and more cold. Peonies are way behind in grwoth this season. I hope the National Peony Convention in Oregon will have some flowers for us to see. April 30th - One last chance for rain and snow mixed tonight. Some fo the species and hybrid peonies are tall enough to see little button flower buds that emerge with the new growth. Whiel at the same time some of the regular garden peonies aren't even breaking the ground yet! We've had plenty of rain and just a peak at the sun every few days. Sure hope spring gets here soon. Some tulips havn't even bloomed yet! April 19 - Oh No! More Snow! Yes, and our spring temperatures have been 5 - 10 degrees cooler than normal. The peonies are just creeping out of the ground which is fine. Heavy, slushy rain and snow mix will make the fields wet for a few days as rain is to continue off an on over the next 7 days. We spent nearly a week cleaning out pots of seedlings damaged by voles which had a inter long seed eating party under the excellent snow cover. So our record seed planting last year of over 10,000 seeds was diminished by 70% so there will be much less to plant out this summer. We lost some treasures but are happy for some that survived since they were from crosses that rarely produce seed, and in some cases only once in the past 24 years. Some of the precious survivors include seedlings of Coral Charm, Anika, Bright Knight, Athena and a few others that escape my memory at the moment. Five intersectional seedlings survived the feast so we shall see how they progress as they are transplanted from their pots to the field this late summer. Our field work has surely been slowed down by the cold and wet and when the warm temperatures return I'm sure the weeds will be waiting to leap out of the ground. The weather across the US has been wild and I hope that those in cooler parts of the US have uncovered their peonies since wet and cold conditions while peonies are trying to start growing unnder soggy mulch usually spells disaster. They can take a hard frost better than wet soggy conditions under mulch. Hope that your spring is turning around and will be one filled with flowers. Happy Gardening! Brigitte and Harvey April 8, 2011 Congratulations to our Early Bird Shopper who won $65 in peonies! There is just a few frozen spots of ground here and there but the forecast rain should finish it off this weekend. By the sounds of the birds spring is here! Crocus are now in full bloom and so are the Snowdrops. Tulips are not showing color yet but will in a about a week with the continued warm weather after a slow start. Our spring newsletter will be going out next week so watch your e-mail box for it if you signed up to receive it. Happy Spring! April 3, 2011 Congratulations to the Houston County Master Gardeners for a wildly successful Green Conference with an incredible turnout of 5 times as many gardeners than they expected! I had a great time visiting with many of them and as always I benefit and learn from all those gardeners combined wisdom. We have very little snow left and the woods are in bloom with masses of single and double flowered snow drops, pink squills and dafodils sprouting with the promise of a show to come. Peonies are barely poking their ruby and rose colored buds out of the ground yet. March 27,2011 Winter came back! We have snow everywhere again where we would normally have crocus and spring flowers budding up it is a brilliant white blanket of snow. I was visiting with a peony grower in Wisconsin yesterday and walking their fields where some peony species like P. daurica and a very few hybrid varieties are just emerging. Even just that small glimpse of activity makes me anxious for spring to arrive in earnest. Many spring birds have arrived and are stripping the left over crabapples from the trees and are singing out in the sunshine, so I know the blooming season will be here before too long no matter the temporary set back of snow. Hope you're enjoying a great spring! March 17th, 2011 Spring is only a few days away and we want to take a moment to thank all the wonderful gardeners we meet this winter at our presentations. You have all been so encouraging to us as we head into our growing season.
March 13-March 31, 2011 Don't miss the chance to win a free peony as outlined on our home page! Here are the rules to be eligible for the free peony contest.
1. Orders must be mailed in or submitted online and postmarked no later than March 31st, 2011.
2. One order out of every 20 orders received by mail or over the web during this time will be selected at random to receive a certificate worth one free peony equal in value to the most expensive peony in their mail order.
3. No faxed, e-mailed, or phone orders will be eligible for this contest.
4. Since we only ship to the United States only orders from the US are eligible.
5. Winners will be announced on April 5th on the website by and by e-mail to the winner.
6. Plant selected by the winners will be shipped with the original order to the same address and is not transferable. The plant must be selected within one week of receiving notice of winning by e-mail.
7. All unclaimed prizes will be donated to the American Peony Society auction.
Brigitte and I have great hopes for some of the seedling peonies that will bloom for the first time this year. Many are rarer hybrid sorts we started some 5 years ago from seed the first of which bloomed last year. Most exciting this fall we are doing a final propagation on advanced seedlings for introduction in the next few years. Hopefully we will find time to get some nice photos prior to breaking up the clumps this fall and will let you have a sneak preview of what’s to come.
It has been a long winter for many and even today mid-May I’m looking at snow covering the ground completely with drifts of snow 5 feet in some areas. That is great for its insulating value for the plants but we are ready for the spring to begin and get back out into the fields from sun-up to sun-down watching the sprouts emerge and flower in all their glory.
March 6, 2011 What a great group of gardeners at the Wisconsin Peony Society where I presented a talk on Selecting Peonies for Your Garden. I enjoyed meeting many of you and talking about peonies, our favorite subject. Some of us even talked about other favorite plants after the meeting. I was especially happy to meet Nate Bremmer owner of Solaris Gardens and talk about breeding peonies along with President Scott Parker who is also an avid peony hybridizer. Makes we want to get out and make more peony crosses this spring. The group was lively and the door prizes were great. I even went home with a new peony! Members also turned in a number of orders right at the meeting and will be receiving them at their annual auction meeting this fall. February 27, 2011 Had a great time meeting with peony friends at the Minnesota Peony Society meeting yesterday. The room was packed with over 150 peony enthusiasts while we were treated to not one but two great presentations on peonies. The first was on designing with cut flower peonies. The presenter Val Wagner did a terrific job showing how to create truely living works of art with as little as one peony. The Minnesota Peony Society is perhaps the largest peony group in the US with over 300 members. They will be staging a flower show this year June 11 and 12 at the Bachman's Heritage Room in Richfield, MN. You'll see hundreds of peony varieties in colors and shapes you never dreamed of so mark your calendar now. It is the place to be and see peonies in all their glory at this exhibition. Bring your garden club, family members or just yourself and enjoy the beauty of this favorite flower.
The second presentors were Don Hollingsworth and Luke Hudson of Hollingsworth Nursery. Luke lead the presentation on "Peonies: The New Generation" and the focus was on the new peonies being bred there at Hollingsworth Peony Nursery. I know peony loving gardeners make the rounds of the web sites and you can see some of their new creations on their web site this year. If you are in the Madison, Wisconsin area join the Wisconsin Peony Society at their next meeting March 5th, 2011 at the U of W Madison Ag Research Station in Verona, WI for a color filled peony presentation on "Selecting Peonies for Your Garden". Meeting starts at Noon and details can be found on the Wisconsin Peony web site. There will be a WPS sponsored bare root peony sale and a money saving and free shipping group order to Hidden Springs taken at this meeting. February 7, 2011 I love this time of year when the morning light hits the eastern windows just a little earlier each day and the night decends just a little later each night. The air can be cold but the brilliant sun reflecting off the mounds of snow have a certain warmth to them.
I can hardly wait for our first package of bare root plants to arrive in the next few weeks. Plants that we poured over catalogs and lists to find something new to keep us excited about the wonderful world of plants and gardening. Today we took time to review where we are in our winter work and set realistic goals for completing projects before the snow is gone soon and we find ourselves watching the spring bulbs poking through the ground on the south side of the house. Clusters of double flowered snowdrops in the woods are already a vision in our minds as we look ahead to spring. Most exciting of all will be when the seedling peonies begin to sprout this year in the many flats set out last fall and nestled under the snow. They emerge in sparkling wine reds and burgundy and chartreuse green as the tiny sprouts get their first peak at the world. In anxious anticipation we will see new life emerging in those flats that one day will be bringing beauty to our lives and shared with love by gardeners like you with future generations. While you still have time before the spring garden season is upon us think about what a glorious year awaits us all with the new spring. February 4, 2011 A nice little warm up today to near freezing temperatures has us thinking of spring already. We just finished sending another of our own plant orders to be sure and get the plants we are looking for to trial in our fields and if they pass the test of vigor and good garden qualities add them to Hidden Springs offerings in the future. Every year we invest in not only making crosses of our own but seek out those new offerings in out of the way places to be sure there is something new to offer in the futrure for our garden friends.
One thing that is for sure is that the early bird gets the worm. We already missed out on getting a new yellow peony from one plant breeder and a pink hybrid from another source. That means some of you have been making good choices to get out and get orders in early for the rarer items offered. Some of the limited items on our list are also getting close to sold out with two or three in that catagory already.
We are moving ahead and planning to get some of our own peonies named and registered this coming season. Photos will be taken and fine tuned measurements on flower color, size, fragrance, stem strength, height, fertility, foliage characteristics, and bloom date for the official description required to officially register a new introduction with the American Peony Society. These newly registered peonies will most likely be offered in the 2012 catalog and will be in short supply their maiden year of release. If you would like to be on the list for a preview listing with photos and pre-sale offer send us an e-mail with the message line New Hidden Springs Peonies. You will be the first to hear about the plants and get a chance to order them before the general release to the public. It's exciting to see these first registrations which began as seeds germinated in 1996 and first blooms in 2000! They are the survivors after going through a rigorous selection process that put them ahead of 2,517 other seedlings that failed to make the grade. Stay tuned for further news as the bloom season arrives. Time to start acting on your wish lists before the days get longer and the hybernating gardeners awake. January 29, 2011 Check the Cottage Garden Peony Link for special money saving offers that will not be repeated once the limited supply is sold out. January 5, 2011 Special savings can be found on many pages where the price gets lower when you order 3 or more of some peonies listed throughout the web site. If you are on a budget don't dispair as there are many peonies priced at under $20 on the Peonies Under $20 page. Imagine being able to get Peony Buckeye Belle Gold Medal winner and 2011 Peony of Year for only $22.99! A reasonable but limited number of each offer has been set aside at these prices and will be withdrawn when our low stock limit is reached so that we will be able to meet the needs of our customers who wish to buy only one or two of any particular variety. So, if you have been planning a garden renovation or making a new one and want to fill it with quality peonies in many colors quickly than we encourage you to take advantage of these specials while they last. P.S. Let your garden club friends know about the special offers and perhaps you can send in a group order to split them up and save even more.
December 30, 2010 Paeonia species are becoming more difficult to find all the time as their habitats shrink and specialty plant nurseries continue to shrink. I recently did a web search to find out where gardeners can find these wild botanical forms of the peony that we love so well. It was an eye opening experience to see that in the United States there are less than a handful of specialty growers listing species peonies and of those most offer one to three different species! We found it almost impossible the past 4 years to keep up with demand for peony species and now we know why. This season another specialty nursery that offered wild peonies closed down leaving the number of sources even more slim.
If you look at our Peony Species page you will see that we are taking a spring field stem count and will be evaluating how many species will be offered in 2011. Where our stocks are too low to keep a sustainable population going we will go through the time consuming process of hand pollination to rebuild stocks. This method takes a long time even with the best possible care. From planting the seed to flowering takes 5-7 years and then an additional 5 years to get the first crop of divisions. At my age that means 2011 will be a most critical year for securing our species collection and providing for their future preservation. In the mean time we will continue to offer a limited supply of these rare beauties and encourage those experienced gardeners that are interested to watch for an up date this coming April. For those gardeners in the Twin Cities area in Minnesota we will have a small offering of species peonies available at the Friends Plant Sale this spring which is held at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. Check the Friends web site for more information.
Warm Greetings to Hidden Springs Garden Friends,
Here is an update from Hidden Springs for the upcoming garden season. If you have checked to web site lately you will have noticed that the 2011 listing of peonies is already online. Pay close attention to the Rare and Limited Edition Page which has 23 different peonies on it this year. Last year 54 different peony varieties sold out and will be grown out and returned to the list in 2014 when ready to harvest. If you see something of interest I suggest you place an order ahead of bloom season which begins in the southern range of peony growing areas in April. If you see the words "limited supply" in any of the peony descriptions it means that we expect to be sold out ahead of our bloom season which begins in May and ends in June. Smart shoppers have already placed their orders to reserve the rarer plants for fall delivery.
To make it easier to zero in on your specific interests we have expanded the index to include several special features.
Select peonies from the 5 bloom season categories and you'll enjoy 5-6 weeks of peony bloom in your garden. Using the huge data base from the Peony Bloom Project we have categorized all the peonies we offer so that you can look at the bloom week rating or relative rating and know that a peony with a week 4 bloom rating will bloom ahead of a week 5 bloom rated peony. You can find this information in the descriptions or by using the links on the left hand navigation index.
Buckeye Belle was selected as the 2011 Peony of the Year and received the American Peony Societies highest award the Gold Medal and the Award of Landscape Merit designation making this an excellent investment for the gardener looking for a high quality peony at a very reasonable price. Deep rich mahogany red flowers are accented by a few golden stamens that make the flower a real attraction in the home garden where it requires no mechanical support to stand up while in bloom. See other top quality varieties at the Award Winning Peonies link.
For the budget conscious gardener we have managed once again to offer 50 different kinds at the Peonies Priced Under $20 link. Many of them are award winning and popular fragrant peonies so that you can get quality and value all at once for your garden. Even though some of the value priced varieties are not on the Limited Supply List many on this list last year sold out because of their exceptional value and we expect the same this year judging from the early bird orders.
Peony Species are not everyone’s cup of tea but as they become rare in the wild these botanical forms are becoming more precious and in need of preservation in specialty gardens where their serene and simple beauty can be admired. There are many examples of plants being restored from conservation minded gardeners collections and as pressure increases on the native habitats this is becoming more important that they be preserved. Hidden Springs has been committed to preserving these rare species but have found them to be more challenging to grow than the common garden peony, slower to multiply and more exacting in their soil requirements which is why they are nearly impossible to find. Several are very difficult to divide leaving us to carefully hand pollinate and raise the plants from seed to blooming size which has taken from 5-13 years depending on the species. In 2011 we will be carefully cataloging our collection of species and will have a very limited listing available in April as we use a new system for estimating yields.
We are asked all the time by gardeners what the most favorite peonies were the past year and have reviewed our records for the past few years and assembled the top 20 on the Most Popular Peonies link. Please note that even with a very good supply on hand some on this list are also those on the Limited Supply list and will join other sold out varieties from last season quickly because of the strong demand. Don’t be disappointed as we are sometimes when we delay our own shopping as we seek out and try to add new varieties to our fields.
So far this winter we have had excellent snow cover (3-4 feet in some areas of the fields) and expect to harvest some fine roots this coming season.
December 15, 2010 Every day we are reading about heirloom peony collections being lost as public gardens scale back their collections due to the economy. Even the National Arboretum is eliminating some of their woody plant and garden perennial collections including some very rare varieties. Now more than ever it is important that gardeners keep track of their perennial plant collections sa these may provide the heirloom plants for future generations. To do so involves only a few steps. Record what you have bought in a garden diary and draw a small map of where the peony is located in your garden. Use landmarks that are not likely to change over time like the main house. One old diary contained information such as Mrs. A. M. Brand planted next to the garden pea rows which no doubt were long gone some 35 years later. Since peonies can live for centuries it may be your great grandchildren who discover the gem growing in your garden from your garden diary. Plant a plastic label that has the peony name written in pencil with the root. I recently dug some peonies that had been in a garden for more than 50 years and the buried tags were still readable and provided proof that the old garden plan we had in hand was indeed accurate. December 2010 News: We have our 2011 peony offerings online already and we are so glad we got a head start with all the snow that has arrived to cover the fields in a deep blanket of snow. Some drifts are over 4 feet and the ridges of our little valley are just about bare in a few spots after the howling winds a few days ago. We've been kept plenty busy shoveling and moving snow and are happy to spend the winter doing some garden research and get a few batches of peony seed sprouted. | 
