Peony ‘Love Affair’ – Itoh Peony

Product Details

Pristine white petals, arranged in symmetrical fashion around a golden heart, make the semi-double blossoms of Itoh Peony ‘Love Affair’ an enchanting sight in any garden. The mildly fragrant flowers generally arrive one per stem on vigorous plants. It’s rare to find a white-flowering Intersectional Peony, which makes this plant a great asset in moon gardens and in mixed borders where the blossoms cast their light on a wide variety of companions.

Hybrids between Tree Peonies and herbaceous Peonies, known as Intersectional or Itoh Peonies, are superb, long-lived plants with the large, exotic blooms and refined foliage of Tree Peonies, but with stems that die back to the ground in fall like herbaceous Peonies. Making crosses between these two groups was a horticultural feat that proved remarkably difficult to accomplish. The quest for this elusive marvel began in Japan in the late 1940s with Mr. Toichi Itoh, and was picked up by American breeders. Don Hollingsworth introduced ‘Garden Treasure’ and ‘Border Charm’ in 1984. Rodger Anderson, an amateur breeder in Wisconsin, spent 12 patient years carrying out crosses, finally hitting the jackpot with yellow ‘Bartzella’, registered in 1986. Since then, other beautiful colors have been developed, but only a few have made it into commerce.

For more information on growing Peonies, click Growing Guide.