Tree peony is Chinese national flowers. It doesn't do me much when I was young. I have only seen it in Chinese paintings and it is always this big cluster of red/pink, or sometimes even black and white. It is just too ordinary to inspire any love. I have never seen a real one as the region we were at is too hot for peony to grow.
Then I visited Yamagami nursery one year when the tree peony is in full bloom. The flower is huge. The purplish red flower has a velvet shine to it. I was in love! I have never seen any flower s so strikingly beautiful and I understand how it had earned the name "king of the flower" in China. The chinese paintings, because of the water color format, is too thin and watery to capture its rich color and beauty. To me, the best material to capture this is probably heavy oil canvas painting. We bought the variety call 洛阳红 (red of luo yang) for $200. Luoyang is the city in China that are famous for growing tree peonies. It was a splurge and it was my Valentine's day gift for that year. (note, the picture doesn't do the flower justice!)The second year, our gardener mistaken it for a bush peony and cut it to ground. I was furious and after the gardener was unrepent about his mistake, I fired him. However, it does not bring my beloved peony back.
Sunset magazine did a feature on Peony this spring and this is how I find out about the Chateau Charmarron peony garden. The website said it is better to plant the flower in the fall. I waited till this week to visit. The road to the garden is a winding one. Despite the website recommends starting from Calavaras/237 east, I thought it is better to go on from Serra road after i have been there. We follow the direction from website and there were signs regarding the peony garden all the way. The road become smaller and smaller and the scenic was quite nice. There are eagles hunting on the sky and you will see cows and horse along the way. We got to one point that the road become 1 lane and there were service vehicles to remove branches so we had to wait for a while. Then we missed the sign for the peony garden and we start hitting down hill on Serra. It didn't seem right, so I called the garden and confirmed that I had pass it because the garden is on the hill top.
Finally we arrived. The garden also have a few llama and my daughter was reluctant to go close by. After we assure her that the llama won't spit on her pretty dress, she get closer and was very curious about it.
On a different note, I have notice this Tea House Cardi on Anthro's site. I'm very curious by it as it didn't receive much blogger attention. However its rich vibrant color provokes the same feeling of a red peony.
