Peonies Through the Generations
Recreating a peony border designed by E. Lowell Kammerer
When laying out my plans for the gardens at my and my husband’s new house, I knew I wanted to incorporate at least one garden design created by my grandfather. He often sketched out plans for plantings at his home gardens at Riverby in Warrenville, IL, which left me a number of designs to choose from. One that immediately stuck out to me was his description and drawing of a Peony border. I have the perfect spot in my yard to implement this, and I love the idea of a trail of Peonies leading from the house to the vegetable garden plot in back!
The first order of business was researching and procuring the plants that will go into this border. Peonies are best planted as bare roots in the fall, but many catalogs open their ordering in late winter and sell out of certain varieties, so I wanted to be on top of obtaining the ones I would need. I was worried that the age of this plan would make some of the varieties difficult to source, but with the exception of a few peonies and one type of iris I was able to find everything that was needed!
A decision remains for the varieties I could not find: choose varieties that closely resemble the original varieties, choose random varieties I enjoyed the look of from the seemingly endless selection available, or relocate a few peonies that were growing in an existing bed when we bought the house. I'm leaning towards the latter option, since it could breathe some new life into the peonies that came with our yard and mix some of our house's history with the layout from my grandfather. Let me know in the comments which option you personally would go with, I'd love to hear all of your thoughts!
The American Peony Society website was immensely helpful for this process, as I was able to see photos in their Peony Registry of vintage varieties even if I was unable to find them commercially available.
I was also unable to find one variety of Iris (Golden Light) included in the original plan, but was able to order a similar appearing cultivar, 'Harvest Maiden', from Breck's.
Having the majority of the needed plants sourced, the next step is transforming lawn into garden bed. I started this process almost immediately upon moving into the house for a couple of beds in other areas of the yard and have had quite a good result. Rather than digging up the existing sod, I gathered cardboard boxes (removing any tape and stickers) and flattened them out. I then laid them over the grass in the area I wanted to become my garden bed, watered the cardboard down, and covered it with soil and then a layer of mulch. Over the course of a season, this will smother the grass underneath and break down enough to be able to plant in! The beds where I utilized this method for last fall were perfectly ready to plant in come spring this year, so I'm anticipating that the Peony bed created now using this method should be ready to plant in fall when the bare roots arrive.
Peonies can have a remarkably long lifespan, with some making it to the remarkable age of 100 years! Although my grandfather’s carefully crafted Peony border is no longer, it’s exciting to think that I could carry on his design for future generations to enjoy. As I plant the peony border, I'll be sure to update you all, and I'd love to hear about any family influences that have inspired areas of your garden!
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I'm on my own peony journey and I couldn't love this more. Fabulous
Oh, how cool to recreate your grandfather's peony design! And incorporating some of the peonies from the yard seems like a great idea!