7th annual Festival of the Peony is abloom in Chadds Ford Twp., Delaware County
CHADDS FORD TWP., Pa. (WPVI) -- Styers Peonies in Chadds Ford Township is abloom, with fields and fields of flowers ready to be admired for their 7th annual Festival of the Peony.
The festival was set to officially open on May 17, but they are ready for guests now.
"Festival of the Peonies is an opportunity once a year where we allow folks to come into the field of 55,000 peony plants, 250 varieties," explained Bruce Mowday, of Styers Peonies. "We offer a very unique experience in the rolling hills of the Brandywine Valley for folks to come in and see the peonies, walk through them, enjoy them. We sell peonies here at wholesale cost."
Styers grows hundreds of thousands of blooms on their network of farms in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New York.
They've been planting since 1890, and became a separate flower farm with peonies in 1920.
"We started to supply the markets in Atlantic City, New York City, and started to ship nationwide," Mowday said of the farm's evolution. "We were one of the very first farms that started harvesting them for the wholesale market."
As peonies pop at Styers, they are also in gardens around our area.
A lot of gardeners snip their peonies when they're open, but Mowday says earlier is better so the flowers open in your home.
Mowday demonstrated using a closed, but ready, bud.
"Something like this is what I would be looking for. Right here we have the sepal slip," Mowday said, indicating the sepal, the outer green leaflike part of the flower, which had pulled away from the bud.
Mowday continued, "We have some cushion on the top, and what I'm going to do is follow the stem all the way down- and right here- the leaf stalk- I'm going to leave that on the plant."
"So I'm going to take my knife at a 45-degree angle- cut it right there- and this is how we harvest peonies," concluded Mowday.
And as tempting as it is, leave flowers on the plant.
"If you cut everything off of your plant, your roots will shrink and shrink over the course of the season, and you end up with a really small plant," Mowday said.
Styers Peonies is open daily from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. through May 26.
