PEONIES PLUS began in 2001 on 4 city lots in Shelton, Washington. The 4500 plant operation was originally set up to do cut flowers wholesale. By 2005 it became obvious to us that there was a demand for quality peony cuts that far exceeded our limited production and a demand for retail sales of both the cut flowers and roots.
Thus we bought 5+ acres just outside Elma, WA (Grays Harbor County) city limits. Unlike the Shelton soil, the Elma soil is deep sandy loam. We commenced having the site prepared and a residence built. In August/September 2005 we relocated the peonies from one of the 4 Shelton lots. We also bought hundreds of roots of different varieties and by the Fall of 2005 had over 6,000 peony plants in the ground, mostly herbaceous with several intersectionals and a few tree peonies. In subsequent years another 6000 plants were added.
We planned PEONIES PLUS at 41 Calder Rd, Elma, WA to be customer friendly and to encourage walking of the fields to observe, smell and enjoy the various varieties. Ground cover fabric is laid around many plants, thus making walking on the very flat pathways easy, and we have labeled the rows with the name of the variety for easy identification. We encourage you to come visit from June 1 until June 15.
We thoroughly enjoy sharing our farm for part of the year with over 3 dozen different bird species and several different pollinators. When visiting us we encourage you to take time to enjoy them as well as enjoying the flowers. We also share the farm with deer, opossum, raccoon, rabbits, moles, voles and coyotes, all of whom are less social, possibly because they know they are less welcome by our resident Border Collie.