Festiva Maxima Peony

The Festiva Maxima Peony (Paeonia lactiflora 'Festiva Maxima') is always dressed and ready for the festivities! This ruffled wonder has been a gardener favorite for over a century! Maxima has earned its reputation as an elegant and ravishing flower with its dramatic appearance and show-worthy unveiling as it slowly opens petal by petal.

You'll have to decide which is your favorite stage is of this brilliant flower's blooming ritual. Serving up two looks in one season. Beginning with the early spring, silky white buds, that slowly unfurl to reveal the ruffled white and magenta-specked petals. Then once in full bloom, the Festiva Maxima Peony looks like she's dressed in a high-end designer gown, ready for Flamenco dancing all night long!

The Festiva Maxima Peony's blooms look luminous against its dark-green foliage, each with a bit of shimmer. Each delicate petal can be speckled with red spots and speckles like dainty freckles! From the center of all those frills and ruffles, rise hot-pink stamen, which set off the luminous blooms when they're fully open!

These large showy blooms grow tall on their strong stems that won't droop under the weight of these voluminous double blooms. Each like fluffy ballroom dancers, bobbing and swaying in the breeze to better perfume the air. However, if your area is prone to heavy rainfall, Peony will benefit from some support.

In fact, this Festiva Maxima's stems are one reason florists love this plant for flower cuttings. Take your bouquets and vase arrangements to the next level with the addition of these fantastic flowers! Plus, when picked as a young bud, will last for quite some time! They'll look fresh for a week or more!

Festiva Maxima Peony will charm your neighbors and the local pollinators as their large blooms are absolutely irresistible to butterflies! Not to mention drawing admirers near and far by their enticing fragrance! You'll be dancing along with them in the spring once Festiva Maxima is in full bloom!

That classic sweet and strong Peony scent is highly sought after by all! Now imagine that wonderful fragrance filling your gardens, or perfuming any room that a few of these lovely blossoms are in!

If you don't just want flowers and scent, and you want handsome foliage as well, then the Festiva Maxima Peony offers that, too. This herbaceous perennial has strong green foliage that is glossy and attractive all growing season. It's the perfect backdrop for those gorgeous blooms!

Even when not in bloom, this deep-green foliage is indeed handsome! Because of course, no gown is complete without a tuxedo nearby, and the robust foliage perfectly sets off these flowers!

The strong foliage is a wonderful backdrop for your summer-blooming shrubs and perennials and also shades your fading spring flower bulbs as they take a rest from the sun in early summer.

How to Use Festiva Maxima Peony In The Landscape

Plant the Festiva Maxima Peony in your cutting garden for armloads of fragrant blossoms every spring! Just like all Peony, Festiva is the perfect, showy addition to a cottage garden and English mixed perennial border.

Add a row to your well-drained sunny areas and along a walkway or path. You'll also wish to keep one close to seating areas so you can enjoy that lovely fragrance!

Looking perfect in both informal and formal gardens, as a stand-alone specimen, or mingling happily among others, Festiva Maxima shines where ever she's planted.

These radiant beauties look even more stunning when paired with other Peonies as she does among a mixture of other shrubs. Fitting in with perennials and even wildflowers and spring bulbs!

White Peony like Festiva is just radiant in the full sun, especially when smothered in the pollinators that will be fluttering around them! This double Peony will have all the butterflies heading for your pollinator garden beds!

All season, the foliage works as a great facer plant to hide 'leggy', bare branches of larger shrubs. Peony also creates a lovely skirt around ornamental trees and accents in the garden!

Your cutting gardens should be brimming with these blooms if you love to create floral arrangements! Either go grand with a whole bouquet fit for a blushing bride, or as simple as a single bloom floating in a bubble bowl, these Maxima Peony are sure to brighten and perfume anywhere.

#ProPlantTips For Care

Even though these flowers look like they require extensive fuss and muss, they're actually very easy to grow and low-maintenance! Plant Festiva Maxima Peony in full sun, and the dazzling white flowers gleam and sparkle in the light.

Requiring well-drained soil, with low to medium moisture, Peony is not particular on the type of soil, so long as has good drainage. Planting Peonies in soggy soils will cause rotting issues, so always provide good drainage.

Extremely cold hardy to growing zones 3 and up, Festiva is a tried and true, reliable plant with long bred hardiness. Reaching a compact 3-foot tall and nearly as wide each year, these herbaceous perennials die back to the ground each winter.

Care is simple; deadheading the spent blooms so the foliage remains a handsome attribute to the garden for the rest of the season, and after frost when the foliage goes dormant, cut all stems and remove all of the season's growth right down to the ground and discard the debris not letting it overwinter with the plant.

Rabbits and deer will leave your Peony alone. However, your pollinators and neighbors won't be able to resist the allure of Festiva Maxima!

Bare root Peonies are shipped as nice 3-5 eye bare root divisions. Their woody roots are not uniform, it is normal for each root to look slightly different.

Plant with the eyes just below ground level, with the woody roots spreading out beneath. Once buried, water and mulch thoroughly to hold in moisture and keep the roots cool in the summer heat. Proper planting time for your Peony is late autumn or early spring.

We hope you can't wait to add these snowy-white globes of luminous beauty to your garden! Maybe you have just begun your obsession with radiant, fragrant Peonies? Or you're expanding a current collection, just be sure to not leave out Festiva Maxima Peony!

These amazing flowers are bright and elegant, adding a touch of mystique and festivity to your garden. Don't miss out on the party! Get your own Festiva Maxima Peony from the Peony experts at Nature Hills Nursery and order yours today!