I agree, Tracey! Beautiful in the field and on the table! I have SO MANY PICTURES! I counted, just from the convention competition I had 286 pictures of flowers! I took pics of all of the tags I could find as well so well over 500 pics from that afternoon alone, probably just as many at Solaris. I really enjoyed Klehm's but Solaris is a peony lover's paradise! I will get all of the pics at least transferred to my computer and will add them to this post as I get them organized, will probably still be adding pictures through the winter.....I'm so behind on everything! My gardens are a mess, some still have last year's dead stuff in them....and we're traveling again in just over a week....

I suppose you have a ton of stuff to plant too, Liz. The Solaris Farms tour was literally perfect timing and weather this year. Hope Nate gets some business out of it. He certainly has earned it.

Good luck getting settled in before you are off again. Your peony season has started... Yes?

Barely started, Tracey. I have a few blooms to post of mine. I'll put them on the Northern Peonies thread and keep pics here of convention blooms. And I agree, Nate certainly has some amazing plants, I plan to order from him much more often and can't wait for some of his seedlings to start selling. I managed to load all of the pics I had on my Ipad onto my desktop and they were mostly of Solaris Farms. Now I need to do the camera and my phone and label everything so I can keep stuff in order. I want to do them a device at a time so I don't get numbers mixed up--want to make sure my names are correct. This thread is going to get pretty long by the time I'm done!

I really would so love to see pics of seedlings and future registrations from Solaris Farms. You recently posted a pic of a peachy color double bloom that I really like. I can't tell whether it is from a herbaceous or tree peony from the pic. Hope you will post more of them.

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I've just barely started organizing the photos, just took a quick look and shots 312 through 699 are from Solaris Farms. I did take a pic of all of the tags, though, and a couple of pics each of flowers. I estimate around 250 of those are flowers with the majority being seedlings and tree peonies.

Liz, thanks for sharing your pictures from your trip to the APS Convention. I'm catching up on all the posts in the peony forum today, and the pics posted here are gorgeous. I can't wait to see the rest of your pictures.

Thanks Annette. I'm really excited about several of the seedlings Solaris has coming up, hope the make it to the commercial sales stage. Looking forward to getting my photos organized to share with the forum!

Any more updates? There must be a lot of people to the convention.

I still have tons of pics to go through, trying to get my flower beds weeded and catch up on work. I'll eventually get them out there! Probably in winter when we're missing the flowers the most.....

I was reading an interesting blog on Southernpeony blog about the gigantic size of flowers and plants in the Dalhke Garden seen during her APS tour. According to the blogger, she found out from the owner of the garden that the peonies and plants are currently growing on land that was used to farm animals. The animal manure composted over the years is the reason for the peonies flowers to bloom such enormous sizes. Liz, I think you visited this garden right? Did you see these gigantic blooms? Do you know how they staked and supported the blooms? I think the blooms must be very heavy.

I had seen those blooms, though compared to other places visited, they seemed to have comparable size of blooms.

Her plants were very well established and been cared for well. There was not a weed in the gardens anywhere. Betty takes great pride in caring for her gardens as well as Sisson Gardens.

It has been a long time since her place was a farm. Not sure if manure lasts that many years. But one thing is certain, her place was impeccably kept and was a treat to see.

I agree with Tracey, Betty's garden was gorgeous but I wouldn't say her blooms were any larger than those I saw in the public gardens in Madison. Her's was my favorite of the personal gardens we toured, though. Loved the garden art and how she used it and even though her flowers were perfect the garden was still so approachable and welcoming. My MIL pointed out stored cocoa hull mulch at Betty's though and I remember seeing on the Brook's blog that they mix it in to their fertilizer mix--think a son was selling it to raise some college funds or something last year? Might be worthwhile going back though their blog to get the makings of that fertilizer.
The largest blooms I saw on the entire trip were some of the seedlings at Solaris.
If all it took was very well matured cow poop my peonies would be amazing as well--our property was a cow pasture before we built our house! Parts of our property is made up of rich, black soil. Unfortunately most of my flower beds are in an area of hard clay.....

Can I ask an irrelevant question? approximately how much budget needed to attend a APS convention?

Not at all irrelevant. A very practical question but would think not easy to answer. I have to fly around 3000 miles just to get to a starting point (Seattle). Well, now that Alaska has joined the rest of the world in transportation, we can now fly directly (either on Alaska Airlines or a sister company) to places further away. But 'in the beginning' that was always the spring board city to leave Alaska. I missed the last peony convention in Oregon but so much would like to attend in 2018 when it is again back in Oregon. I have visited farms/nurseries there and in Washington. Very doable.

So I suppose part of the answer is 'can you jump in your car and just drive there' or do you have to fly to a starting point first. Then drive.

Thanks so much to Liz for all the gorgeous pictures and all the information here.

I'm planning to go in 2018, hope I see you there, Mary!
Littlebin, Mary's right--it'll vary greatly based on whether you can drive and stay at home or have to drive/fly and stay at a hotel. The convention itself was around $160 including an optional, additional cost tour. I drove out to this one just because I wanted to see several additional gardens and have the option to bring back peonies (which I did, think I posted a pic of the tiny rental car with peonies bursting out all of the openings!) The rental car and hotel were around $400, then meals. Not super expensive and I can say with certainty that this one was worth it. There were so many tours of gardens, something to do every single day. The last one I went to was Ohio in 2014--there were no tours, just the exhibition (open to public) and dinner, so basically $120 for a meal and to be able to participate in the after dinner auction.
2017 is supposed to be in Raleigh SC. It'll be interesting to see what they have as activities since there won't be any peonies blooming there when the convention happens. I think 2019 is supposed to be in Ann Arbor MI where the UofM historic peony garden is.
I swear there will be more pictures coming, just need to get my garden in order for the summer (still have some dahlias and glad to plant and to check out and turn on drip lines) before I get started sorting them again.

Thanks for the info on future conventions. I would also love to attend the one in Michigan as the man I work for at the botanical garden is from there and worked at that garden. I have looked to it as representing a goal for our public garden along with the Missouri Botanical. We are members of the national peony collections group though we are very small and only have about 60 or so peonies. We don't have the room to plant out a large selection but were gifted with a private collection around 2004(?) including 30 of the gold medal winners at that time. I added 12 more last fall and have the 2015 winner arriving this fall along with several heritage age plants and a couple of species.

I am slowly working out which sections of my garden to dig up and prepare for 22 more plants for my own garden this fall coming mostly from Hidden Springs, Adelman's and the Holland peony shop. Some of those are destined for the botanical research beds. They are planning to move several of the plants that went into that bed last fall to main sections of the garden where they have space. The garden is designated as arboreal so we have few places for wide open fully sun beds that are not already fully planted and I cannot talk them into replacing some of the less (to me) impressive beds with peonies. I have books showing lovely arrangements of beds such as you have seen at the conventions with wonderful companion plants to make up for the time when the plants are not blooming. Ours start around the end of May (anomala) and continue through the first of August. I realize what I want to, if not replace, at least cut back are native plants, but great swaths of low rather unattractive bushes just don't do it for me.

Thanks Liz for your comment with regards to the Dalhke garden. From the blogger's description, it sounds like composted manure is the magic pill for growing peonies. I am sure any composted manure would be helpful in any garden bed.

I swear every single garden I saw while I was there had amazing sized peonies--even a few I saw planted out near the sidewalks in front of houses with no other gardens around! I think I actually took a few pics as I was walking up to one of the gardens Tracey suggested--I swear I'll get those pics posted eventually!

Found one of those--not in a special garden area but just in front of a nice, well kept house. Not a lot of garden other than these peonies but both the shrubs and the flowers were enormous! WI certainly has the climate to grow peonies!

Karen, I missed the question about the peony supports. I didn't see a single support on any of Betty's peonies--if they were there they were completely masked by the plants. I did see some massive supports in her sedums--those were still short enough to see the hardware. Did you see any, Tracey?

I didn't notice any support for them either. But I believe she has chosen cultivars that don't need them.