With the warm weather over the past couple weeks in southeast Michigan, our gardens are filled with color from mid-to-late spring flowers, including gorgeous deep purple lilacs, brilliant orange poppies, and the soft pink of crabapple flowers.
One of my favorite spring flowers in bloom is the peony, and there’s no better place to view the wide variety of peonies than at the Peony Garden at the Nichols Arboretum in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
People throughout Michigan and beyond travel to the almost 100-year-old Peony Garden to stroll through the 27 beds of the 200+ varieties of herbaceous peonies.
Tree Peonies
And while many people plan a trip to the garden to see herbaceous peonies in late spring, I love taking a tour a few weeks earlier, when the tree peonies are in bloom.
Tree peonies are hardy woody shrubs that grow as wide as they are tall, with bloom that are more dramatic than herbaceous peonies, and are often fragrant.
Native to China, tree peonies were introduced to Japan sometime during the Heian period (794 to 1185 AD). Eventually, tree peonies found their way to Europe and America in the 1800’s.
Over the past couple years, the Peony Garden at Nichols Arboretum has been redesigned to better highlight the many tree peonies in the garden.
Which is wonderful!
With the new redesign, you can now stroll by gorgeous beds of Japanese, Chinese, and European-American tree peonies.
If you visit the garden when the tree peonies are in bloom, look for the brilliant, bold, and showy flowers on the south side of the garden and north of the rhododendrons on the Laurel Ridge Trail.
