Backyard Peonies Emerge - April 2022

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One of the best features of our garden back in Elmhurst were our peonies.  We had well-established and productive peony plants that produced a ton of blooms.  When we moved to Downers, we inherited one, but it was planted back in the shade and never really did anything.  

I planted a couple and transplanted a couple from some teardowns, but they were all clustered in the back with not a ton of sun exposure.  Until last year.  When I expanded the beds closer to our patio and moved three of them there and one to the front yard - IB2DWs area.   I also planted a new white one - Duchesse de Nemours white.  If you look at the photo in this post, it looks like I had FOUR peony plants in this area last year.  

When I go to look at that spot, there's good news and bad news.  

Good news first:  I see some of those tell-tale red tips emerging from the soil.  If you look closely at this photo below, you can spot them:

Now...the bad news:  I only count three.  See below for an annotated version of that same photo with the three peony starts in the circles:

This area gets a decent amount of sun, so I'm hoping that they will do better here and produce some blooms.  If not, there's one more spot to think about:  the south side of our house where I have the Disneyland roses planted.

Location: Downers Grove, IL, USA

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