Is Peony deer resistant?

Deer sample the buds occasionally and almost never damage an established clump. Peonies outlive the people who plant them, and a healthy crown will still be flowering in fifty years.

Two rules decide whether yours flowers at all. Plant the eyes no more than two inches below the surface, because a peony set too deep produces leaves and nothing else, indefinitely, and that is the single most common reason for a non-flowering plant. And give it full sun.

The ants on the buds are not a problem and not doing anything useful either. They are after the sugar the bud exudes and they leave when it opens. Do not spray them.

Support the doubles before they need it. Once a heavy flower head has been rained on and hit the ground, staking will not lift it back.

Do deer eat peonies?

Rarely. Rutgers rates Paeonia lactiflora Rarely Damaged, the top tier, and it is one of the few plants on that list that also carries a large, showy flower. NC State's plant toolbox has no entry for the garden peony, so the rating here stands on Rutgers alone. The usual explanation is the taste of the foliage, and no source consulted here tests it. What is observed, in the Rutgers tier and in the paragraph above, is buds sampled occasionally and an established clump almost never damaged.

Do peonies need protecting?

Not from deer, in most gardens. The one case for a spray is a young plant in its first two springs, when the shoots are soft and the clump has no reserve; a single application of the 20 percent egg mix Colorado State rates High covers that window. Everything else that goes wrong with a peony is in the paragraphs above and none of it has antlers: planted too deep, too shaded, or unstaked in rain.

If one is browsed

A peony browsed in spring loses that year's flowers and nothing else; the crown is untouched and the plant is back the following May. Cut torn stems to a clean point above a leaf. A clump that is flowering less each year was not browsed; lift it in September and check the depth of the eyes.