Mid-summer blooms

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - As we hit our mid-summer stride for the gardening season, some of the prettiest flowers are starting to bloom.

“We have about 100 different kinds of peonies,” said Will Criner, Gardens & Facilities Manager at the Alaska Botanical Garden. And that means you can see more than just the big, white or pink flower that we often think of when we think “peony.”

“The big white flower is a Paeonia Lactiflora. And so a lot of these common cultivars that we think about ‘Bowl of Cream,’ ‘Raspberry Sundae,’ ‘Kansas,’ are some that come to mind. All those are hybrids of lactiflora, like cultivated forms of lactiflora, which is native to China and Siberia.”

Peonies grow well in Alaska.

“Peonies need a cold, a period of dormancy and cold in order to flower,” said Criner. “Most peonies are herbaceous, perennial. So that means that their root systems live multiple years, 50–100 years. Actually, they’re long-lived perennials.”

Criner says the peonies at the Alaska Botanical Garden are just starting to bloom and within the next two weeks they should be at their peak.

See a spelling or grammar error? Report it to web@ktuu.com