Specialty Gardening: White Flower Garden/ Anyone Have One? Or suggestions?, 3 by DonnaMack

DonnaMack wrote:
Oh Evelyn, the great news is that the 4th one is \'Mrs. FDR\' aka \'Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt\'. The first picture. Hybridized in 1932 by Franklin. A prize winner. One of my favorite peonies. One of the greats. It morphs into several shapes, all of which are beautiful. It was one of the first I ever ordered after the initial debacle. But it will require staking. It gets absolutely huge, with tons of secondary buds. It\'s glorious, but it will need the strongest peony hoops you can find. \"Doesn\'t require staking\" is a sales tool.

The bad news is that you do not have \'Festiva Maxima\', which brings back annoying memories. I once ordered three FM on a special \"we have a bumper crop, so buy one and get three\" and got one actual FM. The other two I finally identified as \'Ann Cousins\', which is all white, and \'Kansas\' which is bright red. I informed the company of the error, and not only did they not honor the intent of the original order by sending me two FM\'s, but the sent a \'Lady Alexandra Duff\'. At least really liked that one. And then another company sent me a \'Coral Charm\' instead of FM.

So I went to a Canadian company instead and got my three Festivas two years ago. Huge plants. And they look like this, in the last three pictures, with red flecks and a yellow heart.

I realize now that all my correct peonies came from Canadian companies, and they were all huge, robust plants, vastly superior than any American peony I ever received. I don\'t know why. They bloomed with multiple flowers the first year. Last year, only the second year, they required staking. The two companies have changed hands so I can\'t vouch for them now, but I have a lot of experience with peonies (I have 20) and 75% of the American ones from highly regarded and rated companies were either the wrong peony (two or three years ago ordered three of the single red \'Burma Joy\' and got three huge pink \'Edulis Superba\') or roots so poorly formed that they rotted (eyes on both sides grown vertically, which allows the grower to stuff more roots in a space). Happily, it wasn\'t my money because very kind people gave me very expensive peonies from one particular company (five of them) and they all failed. A failure worth approximately $150 because of the company\'s markup.

The best American company for quality of peony was White Flower Farm (buy three...) The four peonies were all great. But I didn\'t order three of them. Now I see that this happens a lot. I have gotten incorrect peonies from four American companies in total. They all have or had great reviews on Garden Watchdog. One is a Top 30.

Tell the company they sent you the wrong peony. If you do they will replace it. When I have done this, (three times) they were always replaced. One replaced three many years later when I mentioned on a thread in Daves that this highly regarded company had sent me duds. One of their adherents tipped them off. First they implied I didn\'t know what I was doing. After my somewhat testy response they sent the three I had ordered. At least I think so. One never appeared and the other two are just blooming after three years.