| A floral passion |
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| Written by Carolle Doyle, 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 2 Love of peoniesAll of these are represented in national collections and in the case of the peony, the history of the plant itself can be traced through its four diverse collections.The species peonies, those single-flowered beauties such as P. Mlokosewitschii with its luminous primrose yellow petals, can be seen in Fife where Mr and Mrs RJ Mitchell have gathered together these, the world's first peonies. Another private gardener, Mrs M Baber of Gloucestershire, carries on the story with pre-1900 and turn-of-the-century herbaceous peonies. Then the baton is taken up by the great specialist nursery, Kelways in Somerset, which holds the national collection of P. lactiflora varieties and Claire Austin Hardy Plants in Shropshire who hold a collection of hybrid herbaceous peonies. Claire's love of peonies and iris have led her to create a nursery that turns into a field of pink and white and scarlet during peony time. Here you will find not only familiar and well-loved names such as 'Sarah Bernhardt' and 'Bowl of Beauty', but the unfamiliar and fabulous, such as 'Paul M Wild' with voluptuous flowers of deepest red. The history of Kelways and the history of the peony in Britain run side by side. Since its creation in the 1860s, Kelways has become synonymous with this blowsy, glamorous flower. Well-known varieties such as Baroness Schroder, Lady Alexandra Duff and Kelways Glorious were all bred at the nursery. 'Fairchild's mule'We are so used to hybridisation that we forget that there was a time when gardens, however grand their scale and from however far away the plants had travelled, were filled with the species themselves.It was not until Thomas Fairchild produced the first documented artificial hybrid, 'Fairchild's mule' - a cross between a carnation and a sweet william - in the first decades of the 18th century, that hybridisation changed our gardens just as radically as the new introductions flooding into the country. Those early crosses between members of the Dianthus family have been preserved in the nation's herbariums. The most prized specimen in Oxford's Fielding Druce Herbarium is the pressing of a large, double-flowered Fairchild's mule, in this case a cross between a pink and a carnation. You can see what looks very much like the same flower in Mark Trenear's collection. He has named it 'Murray Douglas' after the gardener who gave it to him. It has very large, double red flowers that hang their head in the manner of very early hybrids and its petals fade at the edges. It is a wonderful living link to one of the great events in our garden history and is an emblem of what our national collections are all about. |
