Visiting Styer’s Peony Farm In Chadds Ford

Peonies, with their extravagant blooms, are in their prime right now. Today, my friend Melissa and I, along with my niece Hannah, and her friend Kendra visited Styer’s Peonies in Chadds Ford— twenty-five acres of the queenly flowers.

Styer’s calls the event “Festival of the Peony” but really it’s just an opportune time to visit. The only festivities not happening on the stems are in a small tent with flowers and gifts for sale. But we had come for peonies, not merch and music.

The peony farm’s website states, “Absolutely NO DOGS or FLOWER CLIPPERS!”

To get in, we paid $50 for our carload. Was it overpriced? Maintaining a farm like this can’t be cheap. It worked out to $12.50 for each of us, about what we each paid for lunch later on.

Visitors can either park their car and walk, or drive a loopy lane through the field. We parked, and wandered through the long rows of flowers.

Hannah and I especially enjoy photography, but after about an hour, Melissa and Kendra tactfully mentioned, “All the flowers look the same after a while” and we decided to move on.

I was the driver, and when we headed out the lane, Melissa said, “Oh, I think you need to go the other way.” As I turned the Nissan around, brushing close to the nearest row of peonies, we joked that we might not need flower clippers to clandestinely take some flowers.

We were close to Brandywine Battlefield, and stopped in there next. None of us had visited this Revolutionary War site before.

There are scheduled tours and a museum, but we were causal visitors, choosing instead to poke around the outside of the historic buildings and a nearby Baptist church graveyard, where some of the gravestones had flags for Memorial Day. War is perhaps the most dreadful experience known to man, yet an inescapable part of history.

The last day to visit Styer’s Peonies will be on Monday—Memorial Day. For those of us blessed with peace, flowers, and friendship, may we never forget the gifts we have been given.