2024 Fall Meeting:
We had a great time at our Fall meeting at the historic schoolhouse at Christianson's Nursery in Mount Vernon, Washington, on November 16th.  We started day with an introduction to the nursery and a guided tour of the property with owner John Christianson.  Anne Long from the Dahlia House shared her passion for ranunculus and gave us some tips and tricks.  After lunch Lore Sampson gave us an informative talk on the progression of peony flower forms.  Steve Smith gave us a photo tour from the APS Convention in Bloomington, Minnesota, and his visits to various peony farms and gardens in Wisconsin.

 

We wrapped up the day with our live auction, featuring an incredible selection of peony roots donated by talented growers, along with many other exciting items.  It was one of our largest auctions ever, and and the end of the day, we raised over $5,000 for the society.

​​

2024 Annual Meeting Recap:
We celebrated our 25th annual meeting at Bauman’s Farm and Garden, a family-owned Oregon farm, established in 1895. They offer fresh, locally-grown produce, gourmet foods, bakery, garden plants and more.  Topics for the day included growing peonies from seed, specific outcomes of peony crosses showing the good and not so good flowers. A review of our 2023 garden tours and our annual business meeting.  And of course one of the big draws for our local events at the end of the day is the live auction.

​

One of the items on the agenda was updating our by-laws and constitution.  Why the changes?  We are looking to reflect the legal description of our society as registered with the Oregon Secretary of State, our bank accounts, logo and social media.  The documents show the word "North West" as two separate words.  We are proposing it be combined into one word to match the above already registered documents and bank account with a single word of "Northwest".  Additionally it was voted to standardize the official abbreviation to be known as PNWPS.

​

The changes have been approved by the membership on 2/24/2024 and updated documents will be available soon.

​

​

​

Our fall 2023 meeting was a huge success!

If you missed us on  November 18th, 2023, you missed a great gathering of peony enthusiasts.   Our fall meeting was held at the D.F. Allmendinger Center located at 2606 West Pioneer, Puyallup, WA 98371.  This is also the home of WSU Puyallup Research and Extension Center.

​

Professor Gary Chastanger, gave us a great presentation on Peony diseases and recent Botrytis research.  Steve gave us a preview of the APS Convention in Syracuse, New York last June.

​

We had a wonderful catered lunch from Olive Garden to fuel us for the rest of the day.

​

Lore Sampson gave a great talk on the two Toichi's with a background on how ITOH peonies were created.  We also had a hands on grafting workshop, where everyone learned how to make woody peony grafts and create some of their own grafts to

take home and grow.

​

And of course one of the most anticipated part of the day was the live auction. We had nearly 50 items and even a few rare and unusual peonies that are virtually impossible to purchase anywhere.  Thanks to the generosity of our donors and eager bidders, we were able to raise over $3000 for the the society.  This ensures FREE events like this can continue.