Purchased: Mom's Peonies

My mom’s father was a professional landscape gardener, so she grew up around plants and enjoyed working in the garden. She took particular pride in maintaining her front yard in memory of her father, my grandfather. Mom herself passed away after a period of illness three years ago. During the time when she was too sick to take care of the front beds herself, the one thing that drove her crazy was that the lawn wasn’t being mowed and the beds weren’t being weeded.

The last time she visited us up in WA, we drove up to Vancouver, B.C. and visited the Granville Island Public Market. While there, she spotted a bouquet of white double peonies that just amazed her. Afterwards, she would sometimes mention those peonies to me— something about them stuck in her head. I’ve been meaning to buy this plant for the West Bed in her memory, but circumstances have never seemed right— I’ve gone to nurseries several times looking for it, only to discover that there weren’t any in stock. At another nursery a month ago, something just turned me around and told me it wasn’t the right time.

Today, we happened to be at the nursery and asked the nursery staff for it, only to be told by the resident peony enthusiast that they didn’t have it in— and that she’d remember it if they did. But as we were roaming around, I spotted peony foliage out of the corner of my eye and there it was— ‘Duchesse de Nemours’ in a beautiful, lush gallon pot.

And that’s the story of how Mom’s peony came home with us on Mother’s Day.