Peony - Peony Cora Louise

Satiny Ruffled Blooms An intersectional Peony combining large blooms and great staying power with great vigor and disease resistance. Cora Louise is a Peony different from all others in texture and look, and you will treasure it for many decades in the garden. This intersectional (Itoh hybrid) variety offers ruffled petals held out stiffly like organza and sporting a satiny sheen. Lightly fragrant and beautifully colored, they are arresting in any setting!The color of these blooms shades from white to dark lavender, the petals surrounding a large yellow center. Semi-double and quite large, they arise plentifully in late spring and early summer, giving you enough to cut for the vase as well as to show off in the garden. And because Cora Louise is a cross between garden peonies and tree peonies, you will find this plant exceptionally vigorous, disease-resistant, and long-lasting, with greater bloom form than most others. Just 2 feet tall and 3 feet wide, it makes a big impression in the sunny border!Peonies are such all-around top garden performers! First, they are exceptionally hardy -- easy to grow and carefree once established. One of the longest-lived perennials, a single plant can last for generations. Second, their phenol content makes them unappetizing to pests, including insects, rabbits, and even deer. Remarkably disease-free as well, they literally need no attention once established.Third, they offer three seasons of color. The new spring foliage is reddish; the bright blooms span late spring and early summer; and the fall foliage is tinged with bronze or purple. Fourth, they are equally suited for the landscape or the vase. Very long-lived in the vase, the flowers can even be dried for use as everlastings. Fifth -- but you already know this -- the blooms are out-of-this-world lovely in color, fragrance, and form. As showy as roses and vastly easier to grow and care for, they are the unsung heroes of the flowering garden. Cora Louise is hardy in zones 3-8.