Alexh, I hope you don't mind me starting a new thread with your question.

"I'll take a look at the book. I nearly always try to buy a book for the particular high value plants I'm using and I actually have Alice hardings "The Peony" and Martin Pages "The gardeners Guide to Growing...". Both of these are horrible IMO. Not one drawing of a planted rootstock and only a few pages on cultivation and site selection/preparation. Same thing with John Feltwells book on Clematis. Is the gardening trade unduly afflicted with poor writers?"

Many garden writers are entertaining and fun to read but you generally only see references to the big names when you see a list of published works. A lot of it depends on the time the book was written. Alice Harding's book was written at a time that if you had a garden, you had a gardener, and you were fairly well to do. The book is her observations. Martin Page is English and a professional garden writer. English and European gardeners, from my point of view, are of two kinds. One praises the mist dripping off the one leaf remaining on the tree, the other wants everything contained.

Authors used to be paid by the word or number of pages. It is therefore to their advantage to list page after page of varieties. I for one would enjoy the lists more if each cultivar had a picture of the plant next to the description. The problem with this in peonies, is that very few people have access to the various cultivars. Seeing all the cultivars listed in a book would be like cramming bird(peony) watching within a 4-8 week period. Most you would only see in other peoples pictures or hear of by word of mouth. By the time you were able to arrive at a site the bird (peony) would have disappeared, died, moved for another cultivar, etc.

Because a garden writer is writting from their own observations and studies, the information in their articles and books will be some what limited even for the best writers. You mentioned drawings of how plants should be planted in your original post. Each year or so I hear of a different way to plant peonies. Also I hear of adaptions that can be used (if you are lucky) in growing peonies. Newest old suggestion is to plant a tree peony on it's side laying almost flat under ground. The theory is that like the clumps of saplings shown in a type of bonsai, branches will grow from each of the buds. Each of the branches should have it's own roots. The main stem could then be cut into several plants rather than having only one plant.

Regular peonies can be planted on their sides, straight up, or at an angle depending on your own soil conditions. Most writers will only show one to prevent confusion. Presented with 10 solutions to a problem(planting the peony)will make most people give up and not plant at all. This is why a forum like this is valuable. You can look over the suggestions and thoughts and select what is best for you and your growing conditions. If you ask a question or come up with a posible solution to something you read post it. It may seem silly but the question is probably one that someone would really like to ask but was afraid of the reaction.