It’s June, lovely June and gardens are filled with the romantic perennials of late spring and early summer. The weeds are still manageable (sort of) and the heat hasn’t yet arrived to fry the blossoms. And there are peonies…. the sentimental favourites of a lot of gardeners, especially beginners, who long to grow the perennials they remember from a grandmother’s garden or a farmhouse field. And who doesn’t love peonies, in all their luscious hues from white to deepest red….
….. with many in coral and salmon.
Throw in the Itoh hybrids, and you’ve got beautiful yellows too!
And who doesn’t love peonies in vases? I made this dinner party arrangement with snowball viburnums.
For my daughter’s wedding shower, I added lupines, which tend to swoon curvaceously.
But mostly, we love them in our gardens. Peonies are beautiful in single-plant collections, of course, but they are wonderful actors in ensemble casts, too. Over the years, I’ve photographed peonies in countless gardens; these are some of my favourite combinations. Where I have a cultivar name, I’ve added it – but mostly it’s to get a sense of the design possibilities for pairing plants with peonies. Let’s start with some compositions from the Toronto Botanical Garden (TBG). This is the yellow hybrid Baptisia ‘Solar Flare’ with pink and white peonies.
Native Baptisia australis, blue false indigo, is a classic June peony partner.
This is a nice, crisp combination in the Piet Oudolf-designed entry border: Paeonia ‘Krinkled White’ with willowleaf bluestar (Amsonia tabernaomantana var. salicifolia).
In another garden at the TBG, Paeonia ‘Krinkled White’ looks beautiful with catminit (Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’) and Allium cristophii.
This is Paeonia lactiflora ‘Edulis Superba’ with Ozark bluestar (Amsonia illustris).
I loved this combination of the Itoh Hybrid peony ‘Morning Lilac’ with catmint (Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’).
Sicilian honey lily (Allium siculum) made a nice statement with white-and-green Paeonia lactiflora ‘Green Halo’.
Allium siculum is a great pollinator plant, too!
Isn’t this the perfect June vignette? It features Salvia x sylvestris ‘Summer Snow’ and camint (Nepeta sp.) with a pink peony.
Foxglove penstemon (Penstemon digitalis), is one of my favourite perennenials. A June-blooming native that is drought-tolerant and adaptable to so many soil situations (at my cottage, it grows in gravel), it also makes a charming companion to peonies, especially a glamour star like ‘Bowl of Beauty’, below.
A single-petaled peony (possibly ‘Sea Shell’?) pairs with the spiderwort Tradescantia ‘Concord Grape’.
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I’ve always loved this bold combination in the Oudolf entry border: Paeonia ‘Buckeye Bell’ with meadow sage, Salvia nemorosa ‘Mainacht’ (‘May Night’).
Salvia nemorosa ‘Mainacht’ also looks wonderful with the unusually-coloured Itoh Hybrid ‘Kopper Kettle’.
Along the entry driveway at the TBG, the Oudolf border features Paeonia ‘Bowl of Beauty’ with graceful llittle flowers of the white form of mourning widow cranesbill (Geranium phaeum ‘Album’), backed by the lilac-purple spires of Phlomis tuberosa ‘Amazone’.
Geranium ’Rozanne’ looks great with everything, but is especially effective with the Itoh Hybrid peony ‘Sequestered Sunshine’.
Let’s head further south in Toronto to the lovely four-square potager of Spadina House Museum. This is what you can expect on a perfect morning in June: a romantic melange of Russell Hybrid lupines, heritage bearded irises and peonies, among other June-bloomers.
Here’s a beautiful and classic combination: pink and purple Russell Hybrid lupines with peonies.
The heirloom French peony Jules Elie’ teams up boldly with old-fashioned yellow loosestrife (Lysimachia punctata) here.
And ‘Jules Elie’ also looks great nestled into variegated maiden grass (Miscanthus sinensis ‘Variegatus’).
Spadina House contrasts the shimmering white flowers of Paeonia ‘Duchess de Nemours’ against a sober backdrop of blue false indigo (Baptisia australis).
Beside the vegetable garden, mauve Allium cristophii makes an airy companion to pink and white peonies.
Later-flowering alliums, of course, are perfect companions for peonies. Out west at Vancouver’s Van Dusen Botanical Garden, Allium ‘Globemaster’ combines with a late-season single pink peony.
I’ve made notes of effective peony combinations on various garden tours through the years, too. In a beautiful country garden north of Toronto, I found fern-leaved dropwort (Filipendula vulgaris) consorting with a pink peony.
Another classic peony partner is Oriental poppy; this is Papaver orientale ‘Victoria Louse’.
To finish, I give you the prettiest street garden ever, a generous gesture from a Toronto gardener on one of the TBG’s annual tours years ago: yellow flag iris (Iris pseudacorus) with a dark purple bearded iris and luscious pink Paeonia ‘Jules Elie’.
And for all you gardeners who wouldn’t dream of planting something that pollinators don’t enjoy, rest easy. Provided you plant single or semi-double peonies with lots of pollen-rich stamens exposed, you can usually have your peonies and let bees eat ‘em too!
