Growing Interest - tree peony-growing business of gardener Anthony Francis - Brief Article

Flower & Garden Magazine, Sept, 2001 by Dale Koppel

Eleven years ago, when Anthony Francis was 31, he bought a house in Rockport, ME, and began thinking about planting a garden. It was the first time he had enough land--16,000 square feet--to indulge his love for gardening, a passion that started when he was a boy in Trinidad. "My father had a tiny piece of land," says Francis, who came to New England in 1974 to study chemistry at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "It was 5 feet by 12 feet and had three rose bushes and two dahlia plants."

One day, he noticed a flower in a neighbor's yard. He remembers--"like it was yesterday"--that the bloom was the size of a dinner plate, a magnificent white dinner plate. "I had two thoughts," Francis recalls. "What is that? And where can I get it?"

The plant he so admired was a tree peony, and, at the time, it could only be purchased through a catalog company in Michigan. Over the next few years, as Francis purchased two or three of the plants for his garden each spring, he became mindful of two things: Prices go up, and varieties sell out.

So, five years ago, Francis, a developmental chemist who specializes in analyzing new drugs, decided to go into the peony business. He purchased and planted about 1,000 herbaceous peonies and planted them in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he leased land from his brother-in-law.

"I couldn't afford tree peonies," says Francis "It was the difference between $8 and $80 to $90 per plant." He would have to wait until he could afford them.

Tree peonies aren't really trees but woody shrubs, which, unlike herbaceous peonies, don't die back completely each year. "The advantage over herbaceous peonies" says Francis, "is the extended bloom season," his appreciation of which has evolved over time. "In the beginning, I used to long for the bloom, he says. "But a two-to-three-week bloom isn't much at all." So, he grew to value the plants' swelling buds, which are, he says, "bigger than any you've ever seen," and the show when the bud leaves open.

"Now you've turned two to three weeks into two to three months of ecstasy," he says. It starts in late March when the plants begin to break out of their dormancy. The buds begin to swell, and the plants leaf out, their leaves a magnificent bronze color. Along the ripening leaves, the flower buds start maturing. As spring advances, the flower buds explode into their huge, silky blooms, with the peak bloom coming in June.

Three years ago, Francis began reading up on the hundreds of varieties of tree peonies available in China, where the species originated.

In 1998, after learning a bit of Mandarin (say "guan shi mo yu" if you want the Black Jade Paragon variety of the tree peony), he headed for Beijing. Through the internet, he had located a tree peony grower in southwest China. From Beijing, it was a 10-hour, 600-mile journey to the grower's fields. Once there, he hired an interpreter and bought 1,100 tree peonies ($14,500 worth). The next year, he went back for 800 more.

Tree peonies can be shipped only in September, their dormant season. Each bare root (no soil is allowed to come in with them) is individually wrapped in sphagnum moss and plastic bags. The plants arrive within 24 hours, and Francis picks them up at New York's JFK International Airport, one of only two airports (the other is Los Angeles International) where the plants can be received. Francis then takes some of the shipment to Virginia and the rest to Essex, MA, where he leases land.

Planting tree peonies is no easy task. First, Francis tills the soil. Then he digs a hole, 2 feet wide by 1 1/2 feet deep, for each plant. The process takes him about two weeks of 13-hour days, he says, and for now, he does it solo.

Currently, Francis is growing 70 varieties of tree peonies with names as beautiful as their blooms: Night Glow on Sacred Mountain, Champion of Black Flowers, Imperial Yellow Robe and White Jade.

Colors range from white creams to yellow reds to maroons to a rare pea green, and flowers include singles, semi-doubles, doubles and "thousand petals," which don't have 1,000 petals, but certainly a few hundred that are so explosive, Francis says, they look like a thousand. He also has about 78 tree peonies in his own garden and about 40 herbaceous peonies, along with Oriental lilies, Japanese irises and Japanese maples.

According to Francis, his company, Fine Gardens, is one of only nine growers of tree peonies in the United States, and this year, he finally started selling some of his plants to individuals on an informal basis. He is developing a website and compiling a price list, and next year, he plans to sell to both retail and wholesale clients.

He expects herbaceous peonies will sell for $15 to $35 apiece, and tree peonies for $45 to $100. By next fall, he hopes to consolidate and move all his plants, including the ones in Virginia, to two acres in Essex, MA.

"I can get 6,000 plants in there easily, he says. Then, his plan is to propagate his own peonies. "Someday, there'll be no need to go to China," he says. "And no need to be a scientist anymore."