Although I am not fond of moving peonies, I have not lost any in making the move. Last summer I moved a tree peony that was about 15 years old because I moved a path. It did not suffer at all and is blooming beautifully right now. Our son lives 200 miles away and I have dug and moved several peonies to his garden with out a problem. Al

That sounds very promising! So how deep do we dig down and how wide? Is there anything that you did in preparing the new hole?

Remove some of the leaf structure when you do the move as leaves draw moisture from the roots and you want the roots healthy rather than dried. If you were moving later in the year you could prune most of the foliage to shape. You may have new stems develop around the main plant after the move.

There should be a main root with other roots spraying out from the top. Try to get as large a root ball as you can.

A freshly dug peony will have fleshy roots that break very easily. It is better if the plant is an old one to have someone help you dig so that a transplant shovel on each side of the plant can be used as a lever to raise the root ball from the hole along with the soil. If your soil is on the sandy side, water a day ahead to help the soil stay with the roots. Al

Also...when I moved mine it had a wickedly long tap root...so watch for the big ones. :)