I grew up on a small farm in Ontario and for us kids working on the land was more of a chore than a pleasure. However, that experience made me receptive and appreciative of the beauty of living plants. So when I moved to Calgary in my 30s, the desire to grow flowers came naturally to me. Together with my first wife we turned bare land of our yard into a beautiful flower garden. In 2008, our passion for horticulture got us featured in Vol. 22 “Gardens West” magazine as the winners of the monthly garden competition!
At that time, I also started growing and breeding Asiatic, Oriental and Martagon Lilies on a little piece of land that I was renting from a local farmer. I had much delight in seeing these beauties grow and bloom for me every year: the only thing that set me back was the constant fight with the lily beetle that seemed to be liking my lilies way too much.
However, my dream to live on the land and develop gorgeous gardens and flower fields for people to visit and enjoy became even bigger. It was around that time in 2016 that I was offered to purchase a peony business from Bob Yaremko, who had a collection of 450 peony varieties – Bob was the owner of Parkland Perennials which had a rich history of delivering customers with beautiful peonies for almost 40 years. Once introduced to the beauty, hardiness and magnificence of the peony plant I decided to continue Bob’s legacy.
Currently Parkland Peonies collection contains over 700 Peony varieties and just over 50 named martagon lily varieties. The majority of our Peonies have been collected over the last 4 decades, but we are continually adding new and exciting varieties to our catalogue each year.
