Styers Peonies in Chadds Ford, PA is a 100-year old farm that hosts an annual, 2-week Peony Festival every spring. You can pay $15 per person (or $30/car of 4) to drive or walk through acres of peony fields with 55,000 peonies blooming. It is a pleasant drive of less than an hour from Philadelphia. After a curt welcome, the greeter collected payment and told us the rules: no dogs, no pulling/clipping any peonies, no walking or hopping across rows in the peony field, and park only where it’s marked.
My peony-loving friend and I visited on a weekday May morning during the Peony Festival. We parked and strolled the fields for about an hour. It was lovely to see acres of peonies in shades of white, pink and red in multiple varieties. We guessed that our late winter freeze clearly hurt some varieties.
We were disappointed with how weedy the fields were. It lessened the beauty of strolling the fields and taking photos. There was also no signage with any info about peonies or labels for the many varieties displayed. The pink, multicolored and red peonies were the most fragant. They did not have the coral pink variety that is my friend’s favorite. My friend explained that peonies need to be debudded shortly after they bloom, to protect their vitality. We did not see any evidence of debudding, but maybe it’s premature to do in May.
Note that there were none of the amenities that you’d expect for a festival except for a few portapotties. There were no places to sit, no food stands or music. There was a small gift shop tent to buy flowers in vases, bouquets and t-shirts.
We were surprised that they had so few bouquets of cut peonies to purchase ($30 for several stems). My friend bought me the last bouquet of pink peonies available, and it was midday. I enjoyed watching the petals open, and their smell is heavenly!
