Nat's Peonies Emerging in 2017 - Via Foster Care In Naperville

Yesterday, I posted a photo of our foster-care hosta out in Naperville, but it isn't the only plant we have in my in-laws yard.  There are a few others including an Ostrich Fern, a miniature hosta and this peony plant above.  This peony plant was given to Nat by her Aunt from Tennessee, I believe and has it's roots in one of their Great Aunt's gardens from years ago.  Back in 2010, I posted this piece about these very ferns and their origin story.

I've covered Nat's peonies over the years here on the blog.  You can see the full peony archive here.

These are being fostered by Nat's mom and after being transplanted late in the summer in 2015, had a pretty rough year last year.

Nat's mom is a pretty good gardener and thanks to her, we had these beauties survive.  We brought them over in the middle-of-summer heat (that's when we moved out!), and she got them in the ground and kept them wet as they tried to establish themselves.  I wasn't that hopeful (and I don't think that Nat's Mom was, either!), but sure enough:  she nursed them through survival.

I took our strongest, biggest, most elaborately-rooted plant and picked it for transplanting.

They came back last Spring, but I don't think they ever flowered.

This season?  They're up early and looking strong.  The shoots you see in the photo above show how high they've gotten, but comparing them to long-established veteran peonies in my mother-in-law's garden nearby, they're still a bit behind.  These used to produce dozens of blooms and require quite a bit of rigging to keep them up, but the shock of moving and having to work to re-establish themselves has burned quite a bit of energy.

That stunting of growth really makes me wonder if I should transplant them again and risk setting them back again.  Thinking they should get another year in their current location to get strong and establish an even stronger and thicker root system.  This post by the Iowa State Extension office says that the best time to transplant peonies is September after they have bloomed and you cut the shoots down to the ground.

We're working up a full landscape plan for our #NewOldFarmhouse that will have some landscape beds in both front and back.  Even if we don't take these out of Naperville this year, we'll be sure to leave room for them in the plan to install in 2018.

Also, for those keeping track at home, I seem to have skipped this peony 'emerging' moment last year (because we didn't have a house, I'm thinking!), but I have covered it every other year since 2010.

This is the post for 2017.
Didn't post in 2016.
Here's the post showing the peonies emerging in 2015.
Here's the peonies post from 2014.
I documented the peonies coming back in 2013.
I posted about the peonies in early Spring 2012.
In 2011, the peonies came on strong and seemed to be strongly established.
And in 2010, the peonies made their first Springtime appearance on the blog.

We put them in the ground in September of 2008 and began rehabbing our house that fall.  Our construction work inside the house stretched all the way into the Spring of 2009, so they didn't get much attention that Spring in 2009.