Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas. For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.
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Winterthur in Delaware is the outstanding Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, US) area garden that I am profiling this year. For links to previous gardens profiled and background on Winterthur itself, read my previous Winterthur post by clicking here. In preparing for my second Winterthur post, I visited the garden at the end of May with fellow blogger Donna from the blog Garden Walk Garden Talk. I took hundreds of photos during the visit and that was my downfall. I find that the more photos I have of a potential blog subject, the less likely I am to do the post because the prospect of sorting them seems overwhelming. For example, I never did a post on the gardens I saw during the 2012 Garden Bloggers Fling in Asheville, NC, although I haven’t given up hope.
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I decided that there would be no hope of actually getting the next Winterthur post up on the blog unless I broke the photos into some smaller categories. So today I am showing the images of the peony gardens, which were absolutely spectacular at the end of May. Henry Francis du Pont (1880 to 1969), the man behind the Winterthur gardens, was a voracious collector of plants from all over the world. His peony gardens are magnificent and justify a visit to Winterthur just to see them. However, Winterthur is so wonderful and varied that a visit at any time of year is a pleasure. In fact, for sheer garden beauty, I think Winterthur is my favorite Delaware Valley garden.
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tree peony garden
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The Winterthur peony gardens contain both tree peonies and herbaceous peonies. As I walked through them, I said to Donna I want that one, I want that one. However, I was to be disappointed because most of the peonies in the collection were acquired as unnamed plants by Henry Francis du Pont. There are accession numbers and source information but no names, and the plants aren’t available for sale today according to a Winterthur staff member who was also taking photos. So you can enjoy these photos as images of gorgeous flowers but they won’t lead you to any specific plant purchases. I hope that they will also inspire you to visit Winterthur in person.
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The lilacs behind the peonies were gorgeous.
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This is the same peony as the one pictured at the very beginning of the post. I think it was my favorite although it would be hard to pick one.
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I hope you enjoyed Part 2A of my year of Winterthur posts even though it is slightly out-of-season. The next installment will be on the Quarry Garden filled with candelabra primroses among other treasures.
Carolyn
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Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, U.S., zone 6b. The only plants that we mail order are snowdrops and miniature hostas and only within the US.
If you are within visiting distance and would like to receive catalogues and information about customer events, please send your full name and phone number to carolynsshadegardens@verizon.net. Subscribing to my blog does not sign you up to receive this information.
Nursery Happenings: The nursery is closed and will reopen in the fall around September 15. Have a great summer.
Facebook: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens has a Facebook Page where I post single photos, garden tips, and other information that doesn’t fit into a blog post. You can look at my Facebook page here or click the Like button on my right sidebar here.
Notes: Every word that appears in orange on my blog is a link that you can click for more information. If you want to return to my blog’s homepage to access the sidebar information (catalogues, previous articles, etc.) or to subscribe to my blog, just click here.
CAROLYN'S SHADE GARDENS 