A cut above the rest

Duchesse de Nemours may just be the most popular peony ever grown. It’s been in gardens for more than 160 years and has long been a mainstay among commercial cut flower growers. Its soft, white, double blooms go well with the colors in many gardens and vases, and the size of the blooms are not overpowering, as can be the case with some other double peonies. I think it’s pretty safe to say that more brides have walked down the aisle with a bouquet of Duchesse de Nemours in their hands than any other peony.
The medium-sized flowers feature a very lovely glow of canary yellow from near the center of the petals. Deeper into the bloom, at the base of the inner petals, a soft spring green is visible. The overall effect says freshness and purity.
That clean, healthy glow extends to the 36-inch stems and deep green foliage of the plant. This is one of the most absolutely care-free peony grown. The leaves stay fresh looking throughout the growing season before changing to yellow in the fall.
Cut flower producers love it for the tremendous number of stems the plants shoot forth each year and because it opens so dependably after being cut in bud stage. Most double peonies are harvested before they open, but the buds need to reach just the right degree of softness before cutting or they won’t open well. But with Duchesse, if the green covering enclosing the petals begins to split and show even a sliver of white, the flower can be harvested and will open after a few days in a vase of water. The unopened buds can be held out of water and in a cooler for weeks before used in a bouquet, making it ideal for shipping long distances.
Duchesse de Nemours came out of the work of famed 19th Century french breeder Jacques Calot. He had inherited the peony collection of an amateur breeder Comte de Cussy and developed a large number of new cultivars in the mid-to-late 1800s, many of which now have all but disappeared from the garden catalogs. Calot named this peony for a well known woman of her time—Victoria Augusta Antonia de Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who was better known as the Duchesse de Nemours.
The daughter-in-law of King Louis-Philippe, she and her family was forced to flee into exile to England after the French Revolution of 1848, and she became a favorite of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. She died suddenly in 1857 at the age of 35. After her passing Queen Victoria wrote “so dear, so good, one of those pure, virtuous, unobtrusive characters who make a home peaceful, cheery and happy.”
The same can be said of her namesake peony.
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