Paeonia 'CHARLES WHITE' perennial peony

Charlie's White is an exceptionally gorgeous herbaceous peony bred by Charles Klehm in 1951. Its flowers are medium sized, fully double and beautifully formed with pure white petals around a compact head of almost linear petaloides which are light yellow as the flower opens up and turn as white as the petals. The fragrance is fresh, not very spicy for a peony, lightly sweet with a faint citrus tone. It is very early, blooming from late May for about 3 weeks atop 70-80 cm tall stems. Deciduous leaves are rather thick, deep green, highly glossy, and palmately divided.

These peonies are great plants not only for perennial beds and borders, they also look very elegant combined with shrubs and trees to soften their woody structures. They also make beautiful cut flowers, though, they never last more than a week. They are one of the easiest perennials to grow – just make sure you don’t put them too deep and you won’t have a trouble with them - they can take almost any kind of weather caprice and full neglect. Peonies are long-lived plants, there can be found some 100 years old specimens in royal gardens and arboretums.

Peonies need fertile, well-drained, preferably moist soil. If you want to be really nice to them water them freely on hot and dry days and feed them annually after they roll up foliage completely for profusion of flowers and healthy appearance. Still, this extra care is not required, once established they will grow without help. They don’t like transplanting. If you need to reduce the clump size, remove the unwanted part leaving the rest of the rhizomes in soil, untouched. Fully hardy to about -34°C (USDA zone 4).

Last update 15-06-2017