Or, dudes -- you could just move somewhere with a proper winter! :)

We're in South Bay and the house we're renting has a tree peony pretty well established. It gets moderate light and water only when it rains (it's in a weird corner and unless it's blooming we honestly forget about it) and it's thriving. We certainly don't do all of that icing and whatnot to it.

If I had any idea what kind of peony it is I would tell you. It's a distinct tree (the branches start about 5 feet off the ground) and it's full of leaves year round. The flowers are just now budding out and were in full bloom last January. They range from solid pale pink to white with hot pink streaks.

Good luck!

Emily, tree peonies, like yours, don't need as much winter chill as herbaceous perennial peonies. They grow in Sunset zones 2-12 and 14-23, as opposed to herbaceous which grow best in 1-11 or 14-20 as well as Alaskan zones A1-3. Glad your plants are doing well.

Kathy G: You understand about the "grass is always greener,", don't you? This is the same thing as people who live where there are real winters figuring out ways to keep their tropicals alive until spring. Some of us seem to need plants that challenge us; some of us don't.

Umm... peonies are nice, but doesn't this go against the logic of preferring local varieties since they're already accustomed to the local climate and don't need any 'fooling', especially when fooling means wasting precious energy and water to make and dump ice in your yard every night. Not exactly sustainable. Of course buying peonies that had to be flown/trucked in from somewhere else has its own set of environmental issues. In the end I just think it just sounds silly rather than clever, not unlike dumping tons of precious water and chemicals on your lawn to keep it green all year.

Sincerely,

a huge fan of this blog

Sharon, of course I know about 'the grass is greener' and so do my plants. Every fall, when I haul my geraniums off the patio deck and transfer them to my little greenhouse for the winter, they start complaining. Apparently they overheard me telling someone about an article I had just read in the newspaper, about rich New Yorkers who send their tropical house plants to Florida for overwintering. My spoiled rotten darlings tell me I should send them back to California (where I got them, from my mother, and from cuttings I took in a Bay Area motel) for the winter, and the fact that I just pat them on the leaf and go on about my business with no sympathy at all, causes them to threaten to go on strike. Right. They know that death by snow and ice is only inches away!

I was really just kidding. I actually live in a cold winter climate because I LIKE it. I love the distinct seasonal changes and the ease of growing so many wonderful hardy perennials. I grew up in the Bay Area and although there is occasionally some zonal envy, mostly I'm happy here, and my geraniums just have to make the best of it.