By Ken Mammarella
Contributing Writer

Styer’s Peonies has grown into something big – 170,000-plus peonies with millions of blooms in three states, on acreage that draws thousands of people each year for peony festivals. And it’s all from what the company calls “a modest experiment” that began around 1900 with a small patch.

The company today grows more than 250 varieties of peonies. Some are single blooms, and some are double blooms, with “big bombs of petals,” said company representative Bruce Mowday Jr.

Some have scents, some not. Some bloom early, some late. One’s named for Ann Styer.

Some are pink (popular for Mother’s Day), some white (popular for weddings) and some yellow (popular with people who like yellow). Some are almost a rainbow by themselves, like the Itoh ‘Lollipop,’ which sports a “creamy yellow base with unique raspberry streaks and splashes,” says styerspeonies.com. “Each bloom is a little different, giving it an artistic, almost tie-dyed look.”

The star of them all is ‘Coral Charm,’ an early, double bloom, with delicate, ruffled petals, starting as a deep coral bud and gradually opening to a softer shade. It’s the company’s best seller, and it’s also the biggest draw during the festivals. “It’s the field where everyone loves to be” during the festival, Mowday said. “Just look where they hang out.”

“Everybody loves peonies,” Styer’s Peonies owner Richard Currie told Lancaster Farming. “You just have to show it to them and they say ‘Ooooh, I want to buy that!’ ”

It began in Concordville

In 1875, John Franklin Styer bought a farm in Concordville. In 1890, his sons Jacob J. and T. Walter split the land. Jacob began Styer’s Nurseries, and Walter began Concordville Nurseries, according to a history by genealogist Karen Furst. A few years later, Jacob tried sending peonies from his test patch to New York wholesale florists, who dumped them because they were wild. “Greenhouse growers boycotted any firm which sold outdoor flowers,” according to Styer’s Peonies’ Facebook.

Jacob succeeded with an end run, involving the Atlantic City hotels that he was supplying with mushrooms. “The next year he sent his whole production of peonies to those hotels free,” the corporate history continues. “They created a sensation, to the extent that New Yorkers demanded peonies in that market, and the use of peonies in New York was established.”

Just before World War II, Styer’s bought land outside Pennsylvania to expand the growing and selling season, now running roughly from mid-April to July 4.

In 1962, “a rift developed between J. Franklin Styer and his son Jack, and the business was split up,” Furst writes. “Jack became the sole owner of the garden center while his father retained the landscape division and the peony business.” The peony business was sold in 1982 to a nephew of J. Franklin.

The peony land, on Cossart Road in Pennsbury Township, was one of the founding farms of the Brandywine Conservancy’s environmental protection project, Mowday said. Fifty acres are devoted to the peonies, with adjacent land previously farmed by Currie’s brother-in-law, H.G. Haskell, who announced in March that he was retiring. Haskell’s nearby SIW Vegetables produce stand has been taken over by the Ramseys, who have been farming in northern Delaware since 1860 and have rebranded the stand as New Roots by Ramsey’s Farm.

Currie, who’d been running handling some operations for Styer’s Peonies since 1990, in 2010 bought the business, one of America’s largest peony operations. In 2018, he hired Mowday to execute his “vision, hope and dream” of a festival, which has grown to draw 10,000 in May to Pennsbury Township. Another festival draws crowds to Geneva, N.Y., where there are even more peonies.

Mowday is a Chester County native with a background in event planning for Oxford Main Street, the Philly Balloon & Music Festival in Glenmoore, the Lancaster Hot Air Balloon Festival and the Plantation Field Horse Trials in Unionville.

Best practices in the field

Over the decades, Styer’s has figured out the best ways to grow peonies commercially. It offers different advice to consumers, who often have different goals.

It starts in the spring, when the plants start growing. “We pluck off side shoots and toss them on the ground, leaving only one flower bud on the top of every stem, so that it’s intensifying the energy, sending all that energy to one thick, beautiful stem, with a larger, beautiful flower on the top,” he said.

“That allows our plants to stand straight up in the air in the spring, as opposed to the ones at home that start to fall over,” Mowday said. “We need that because we are in the cut-flower business. Florists and event planners want one flower per stem.”

Without that trimming, a peony “could have upwards of 20 or more flowers per plant.”

And when they cut the flowers for sale, “we never cut off every flower from our plants, and nor should a home gardener,” he said. “We only cut one in every eight flowers so the plant can do its natural cycle and feed those roots for next year.” 

The peony harvest window is only a few weeks each spring, so using land in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, the mid-Atlantic and New York’s Finger Lakes means that Styer’s can sell cut flowers longer. 

Harvest time

Workers cut off the budding stems, which are chilled overnight, slowing their metabolism and “warding off any ants that have snuck in to enjoy the sugary casing sealing the buds,” the Chester County Press reported. The cuttings are graded on the thickness and length of stem, plus the size of the floral head, Lancaster Farming reported.

The minimally harvested plants still look great for the festival, where people just enjoy the flowers by foot and by car, dine among them, create art and participate in yoga. They can also buy cut flowers (which could last a week or more), potted plants, a themed dry rosé blend from Chaddsford Winery and peony-scented products (such as soaps, candles and jellies).

“In the world of flowers and money, the peony flower takes up so much room in an arrangement that your bang for your buck is a really good one, in addition to the fact that they’re really gorgeous,” Laurie Haskell told Higgins. She has two reasons to know: she’s the wife of Styer’s Peonies owner Richard Currie and retired owner of Wild Thyme Flowers in Centreville, Delaware.

Also in the spring, Styer’s identifies plants that should be thinned from the beds. Starting in early October, these plants are dug up, with the root clumps dropped on the ground several times to knock off excess dirt. Workers then carve the clumps apart, so each section has three to five eyelets. “They look like fingertips sticking up out of the top of the root, and they’re next season’s stems,” he said. 

The sections are cleaned up, packed with peat moss and shipped to customers. The clumps run $28 to $60, depending on variety. “We send our customers the highest-quality options from these divisions,” he said, “and then we take the smallest and plant them back in the fields and plant them in pots to sell at our festival.”

Before the roots are replanted, “we go through the field with a big machine called a flail to pulverize everything left in the field. We don’t want to leave stems laying in the field to cause mold or fungus issues for the following season. Then we enjoy the winter slumber, as our plants do.”