My Obsession With Peonies And Hydrangea – A Great Alternative

I REALLLLLLY Want Peonies and Hydrangea…Growing flowers in Florida is a whole different game

There are so many flowers that I would LOVE to be able to grow here in South Florida. However, I have learned over the last 20 years that hydrangeas, peonies and some of my other favorites, just do not thrive here due to our scorching weather in the summer and no cold spell in the winter months.

I have opted to buy some of my favorites in pots and nurture them to enjoy inside my home. It is just too darn hot for these delicate beauties outside.

I just got a beautiful hydrangea at The Fresh Market (my favorite market), and as long as I water it every day, it will last at least 3 – 4 weeks. It was a bit of an investment at $19.99 but outlasts any cut flowers, and it is just so gorgeous! I placed it in a pretty ceramic planter and added some ivy plants, which made it even more special.

Always knowing that I am looking for other beauties to grow in our garden, the hubs recently found an excellent article in the Sun Sentinel regarding growing the Angelique tulip. 

I think I will try to grow them in my yard as these are really beautiful and almost looks like a peony. Now, I need something that resembles the hydrangea. Otherwise, I will just have to settle for having these in the house where they do pretty well.

Article By Lee Reich – Associated Press.

Angelique is soon to arrive in my garden, but only briefly. And as in years past, I’ll miss her when she leaves and will look forward to her return next spring.

She has proved to be one of the prettiest tulips.

To describe her petals merely as rose-pink does her injustice. Angelique changes during her stay here each spring. Her blossoms start out neatly folded, upright and very tuliplike, but over the course of days spread wider and wider. As she opens, she shows off her many petals, making her look like a mix of peony and a rose. Inside each blossom, the bases of the petals have a yellow glow. Put your nose to a blossom, and you can even detect a rose-like aroma.

That rose-pink color is not a uniform shade brushed over all the petals. Instead, the petals have a porcelain white background that’s dabbed with rose-pink brushstrokes of varying intensity.

Both the color and the shape of the blossoms hold up well in a vase, the petals on the cut flowers becoming translucent over time.

I’ll give you two more reasons to plant Angelique. First, each bulb, given good conditions, will send up multiple flower stalks. Second, Angelique is a tulip that often perennializes. Sure, all tulips are perennial in theory, but the blossoms of most tulips peter out over time.

A good site helps tulips — even those that tend to perennialize — last longer. Such a site is bathed in at least five hours of sun daily while tulips are up out of the ground in spring. After that, some shade is beneficial to keep the ground in which the bulbs are slumbering from getting too warm. Angelique’s bed beneath my grape arbor should prove a perfect home for her.

Good nutrition and well-drained soil encourage the lusty growth that feeds the following year’s blooms.

A mulch such as compost could do that feeding at the same time as it insulates the soil to help keep it from getting too warm.

After blossoming, Angelique and other tulips make seeds. Rather than letting them do this, I snap off developing seed heads, so the plants instead channel their energy to the developing bulbs.

Any tulip bulb multiplies and, with time, all those new bulbs begin to crowd each other. How long before the bulbs become overcrowded depends on the kind of bulb and the growing conditions, but diminished flowering is the result. When that begins to happen, it’s time to dig them up, separate them and replant them. It does not seem possible to have too much of Angelique, but if that happens, she also would make a great gift.

Angelique is not a new kid on the block, just a new tulip in my garden. She’s been around since 1959, found as a chance mutation in a stock of Granda, another fine, rose-colored, double-flowered, late tulip. Granda was evidently not as fine as Angelique because it is no longer around.