Peony Garden

The Botanical Garden's corner nearest the Emajõgi River is home to the Peony Garden which captivates visitors in June and July with its sea of flowers and waves of exquisite scent wafting above it. The Peony Garden has close to 300 cultivars of peonies grouped by the colour of their flowers.

The foundations for the collection were laid by old cultivars donated to the Garden in the 1990s by Sulev Savisaar, the best-known peony cultivator of Estonia. Besides new ones, the Peony Garden, created in 2004, also holds peony cultivars that were bred in the former Soviet Union and that are in considerable demand in the world.

Based on their form, peonies are divided into two groups – herbaceous and woody peonies. There are more than 5000 herbaceous peony cultivars in the world today; warmth-loving woody peony cultivars have been bred primarily in China and Japan. When the two groups were crossed, the result – Itoh-peony – turned out to be suited to our climate and can be seen on the slope facing the Garden's pond. Worth a look are the yellow-coloured varieties 'Bartzella', 'Garden Treasure', 'Viking Full Moon'.

In the garden, different varieties are grouped according to the colour of the flowers - red, pink, white. In the central part of the garden, you will find a small collection of wild varieties of peonies that are hardy in our climate, the latter also growing in the East Asian section of the Arboretum.

Flowering in this part of the garden, however, starts in early spring. Beginning with crocus, continuing with tulip varieties, then the peonies take over the garden. In the autumn, the garden flowers come to a close. In the spring, you will also find the white-flowered Magnolia kobus and the pink-flowered Sargent's cherry trees (Prunus sargentii), which stretch across the garden wall.