Peony supports | Troy Scott Smith from Sissinghurst explains how to stake peonies

[Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] here we are then it's a perfect time to be staking our peonies and the ground's Still Still moist at this time of year and um I'm a not so tall that we're going to have already flopped so we're trying a new method this year it's using Hazel and it's a product which is really useful for us because we grow it here in the garden in the notary so we can just copies these sticks in the winter time and really the inspiration came from the Royal structures that we train on Hazel and have done for many years and the purpose there is to promote flowering All Along The Raw shoots but with the peony the idea is but actually using these hairs little benders to form this cage of the peony will avoid us sticking in uh Steaks around the crown of a plant you know peonies grow from this quite fleshy swollen root and we just feel that pushing in the stakes can really damage those roots so forming a cage around it and allowing the peony to grow through will avoid us damaging any of that of that root structure okay so I'm just going to sift through these sticks now so these are all all coppished Hazel and the secret is is to actually if you can grow your Hazel in different conditions the ones that we grow in either closer together or in more shade produce these longer unbranched stems ideal for this kind of task whereas for steak material you actually want them branched so these are just two-year-old and I say I cut them in in uh in Winter the whole selection of them I just need to go through now and select the right ones for this particular job so I actually think these these four uh should do well what I'm really after is something that's that's strong enough to actually support the peony but yet Supple enough to actually Bend and and push in the ground um so I think these four I'll give a go actually really important at any time of year really to try and keep off your soil so you might be able to see that I'm using little boards to stand on um our soil here at sitting Earth is very heavily clear which makes it even more important anyway so I've got my four sticks and this group of peonies quite large so I'm only actually expecting to do half of it with one Mound or dorm so I'll have two dorms here eventually so the first first stick is quite easy to do because it doesn't really matter where you put it I think one of the things is is to just push it in far enough so it stays in last thing you want is to for it to Spring out and of course if you think it's too tall because of course what you're after doing is supporting the painting there's no point this being much higher than the finished peony so even pushed in the ground I think that's a little too long so I'm just going to take off just a bit of the end so that's the first stick so you might find that these are just a little bit too stiff or not very Supple so you might just need to sort of what we say take out the tension well sort of loosening those fibers breaking those fibers a little bit just to help that bend nicely so this is where it gets a little bit tricky and you have to make in a pleasing pattern so I'm going to put four sticks around here so what I found the best best way to do it is you're finding about halfway between those two points and I'm pushing this one in again I'm keeping it away from the crown of a peony so as not to damage those roots so you just push that in Far Enough this is where it can start to get a bit tricky um because you almost need three pairs of hands so this is going to be a little bit long again I'm just going to cut the end off that one [Music] and I'll just put that in again halfway um between those two points about that now I might end up adjusting that so I'm not gonna I'm not going to push it all the way home um ideally I want those to be touching so I'm just going to take a bit more offer okay third stick again take out that tension okay so with this one uh I'm going to start off so this is a slightly thicker end this is the slightly thinner end of that first stick that I've put in so I'm going to put it in that same place but this time I'm going to push it in there [Music] and actually bend it in this fashion I want to go over that that one but under that one this just helps just to sort of lock it in place sometimes you need to use string just to keep it there and then bend it down it's a little bit long let the end off bend it down and push it in so this is where we now use string so we use uh um free ply string and for this job it only needs to last really until July doesn't it so it doesn't need to be super thick or strong string so you may find why my stellar attached to that spool it's just so much easier and less wasteful and and quicker can you imagine sort of cutting a piece of string like putting my secateurs away and then and then tie in and then having to get my secateurs again and cut again so I'm you know I'm making two cuts when as you can see from that first one if I just leave it attached there I can just tie it once I can have less waste because I'm not cutting the length that's either going to be too long or Too Short and then when I'm done I can just cut it once and it's done so yeah leave yourself attached and and also use your secateurs you know with sharp secateurs they can cut string easily enough you don't need secretarism and a knife so it's just trying to make every operation just that little bit smoother and sort of quicker no point wasting time you know you can spend that time doing more more of a gardening so we've got three sticks in there and it you know there's no rule to where they are you just need to think about think about the peony and you know what are the sticks trying to do they're just trying to form this cage of sort of lattice work but these shoots can grow through and not drop drop through the gaps so much around the edges so elastic I mean you could put more than four in if you wanted but we find fours kind of enough just take that bit of tension up and then so I've got two sticks there two sticks here so I'm elastic needs to finish there um but that's a thicken so ideally with a thin end just seems to be a nicer more pleasing finish Victor thin so I'm going to put that there so push that bit in and I think I'll go around this way and then finish again where you've got just the one stick there so it just gets a bit thick towards this end so I'm using my knee just to try and keep it in place so I want it here so I'm going to push my knee there to keep it in place and then push you see if you do it too late in the year the ground will be too dry to get it in I'm just holding that until I get a tie on it I'm just going to wrap it around twice and then just tie off it does so that should I mean I had to pull away from a tree a little bit because of the roots so these few are a little bit out of the cage but actually I don't mind that I quite like the fact that all of these will be supported as they grow up and flower kind of at this level and there might be just a few that just kind of escape and that just gives the whole garden back sort of lived in feel rather than all being trust up that's a wooden door I'm finished and we've got a few more to do all dotted around the garden here and it's an experiment and we'll see we'll see if it works for me it feels the right thing to do it feels more sustainable than using the metal stakes that we used to use and actually it's something that once we get uh into the sequence of doing this and we we know the size of a peony we can actually put these structures in earlier in the year when we're less busy you know such a busy time now with so much to do yeah actually because Visa attractive I wouldn't mind seeing but I was dotted through even in sort of February time so let's see if it works and then we can uh adapt and and grow the idea for next season [Music] foreign

Channel: Gardens Illustrated

Views: 10,833

Keywords: gardening, gardens, peonies, support, plant supports, peony supports

Id: wlF5D3x6pRw

Length: 11min 49sec (709 seconds)

Published: Tue May 02 2023