Avant Gardener: Hydrangeas add interest and color to the landscape

  • By Kyle Valentini
  • May 2, 2011
  • 282
                        
Summary: Hydrangeas are great in the landscape as bedding plants or a focal point in the garden. They are easy to grow if you know the species and the specific care required to achieve beautiful blooms that will last from June to November. Hydrangeas are one of the loveliest additions to the garden or landscape. Unlike the hydrangeas of years ago, they now come in various sizes, shapes and colors to compliment any outdoor design. They are easy to grow but it takes a little know-how to get it just right. If you already have hydrangeas but are unsure of the species, take a cutting or a photograph to your local nursery where a skilled horticulturist can tell you what it is. Knowing what you have will allow you to care for it properly. Skilled horticulturists do not work at big box stores where a garden center is put in place seasonally. Our region is full of excellent year-round nurseries, greenhouses and growers who have been trained to identify plants. The most common hydrangeas in our region are Bigleaf which include Lacecap and Mophead, Oakleaf and Smooth. There are about 23 varieties of hydrangea cultivated but the three I have listed are probably the type you have in your landscaping or garden. I won’t carry on about Latin names and botanical names because those are things most people forget. If you have hydrangeas or are planning to buy hydrangeas to add to your landscaping I am relatively certain your goal is to get them to grow, thrive and bloom and not impress your neighbors with botanical names used only by botanists. The Bigleaf varieties are the ones we all know of as changing color depending on the amount of aluminum in the soil. I don’t recommend adding chemicals to the soil to alter the color of hydrangeas but it can be done. Adding organic matter like peat to the soil around your plants can raise the pH and thus preventing the plant from taking up aluminum from the soil. Acidic soils will produce blue flowers and baser soils, pink. I suggest leaving blue hydrangeas blue and pink hydrangeas pink or just buy white ones that do not change color and add color to the landscape with other plants. Adding things like aluminum sulfate will indeed change the pink hydrangeas to blue but over time the aluminum sulfate builds up in the soil and you will kill your plants, disrupt the eco system and be riddled with guilt for years to come. Bigleaf and Oakleaf hydrangeas produce flowers on stems produced from last year. It is important not to prune them after August or you will cut away all the buds. The best time to prune them is late summer immediately after they have bloomed. Heavy pruning is not necessary. Simply remove spent flowers and cut out any dead wood. The plant can be reshaped if necessary but never remove more than one third of the plant at one time. Smooth hydrangeas like Annabelle produce white flowers on stems produced this year. They can be lightly pruned or shaped in the early spring before blooms appear. Proper pruning encourages stronger stems. Nearly all hydrangeas prefer partial sun to light shade. Full sun will burn them and too much shade will keep them from flourishing. Hydrangeas like a lot of water and in the heat of the summer you might need to water them more than once a day. Hydrangeas can get quite large. Space them properly when you first plant them. Don’t be tempted to crowd them or they will not have enough room to grow. You can fill in empty spaces with flowering annuals or herbs while you wait for the hydrangeas to reach their full size or you can simply accept that your landscaping is not going to look like the pictures in a gardening magazine until you have given it some time to grow. If your soil is healthy fertilizing should not be necessary. If you feel you must fertilize use an organic fertilizer low in nitrogen. Too much nitrogen discouraged blooms. It is always best to fertilize too little than too much.


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