Success With Hydrangeas Blog

My apologies for being absent for so long. I have been working on a new hydrangea book about pruning to the exclusion of just about everything else. But I am seeing lots of questions in a variety of formats asking about hydrangea pruning. Clearly, it’s time to open the hydrangea pruning discussion for 2021.

Print Book Reduction Success With Hydrangeas is on sale! I was just on Amazon checking my numbers and noticed they have reduced the selling price of my book. It normally sells for $29.95 USD and for however long they decide, it is being sold for $26.16 USD AND FREE SHIPPING (without a Prime membership). You…

It happened again – sudden freezing temps hit before my hydrangeas had a chance to harden off. Not a frost, but a solid freeze at 27 F that turned the birdbath turned into a skating rink. So sad to go outside and see what those temps did to my big leaf and mountain hydrangeas. Time…

One of the best features of hydrangeas is that they keep on giving with their late season color. Let me explain.

It’s time to report on 2020 winter impact on my hydrangeas, a little later than I would have liked. I test both new and old introductions to the big leaf (macrophylla) and mountain (serrata) hydrangea families. Invariably, some plants produce few or no flowers. Then I examine why that happened. You can read previous reports…

You should be having a fabulous hydrangea year. The relatively mild winter and forgiving spring is giving gardeners in the Northeast a fantastic show. Just about every big leaf hydrangea (macrophylla) is flowering. If your plants aren’t performing, take a minute to read a post I just did  for the National Garden Bureau. In July it’s…

Are the leaves on your ‘Annabelle’ hydrangea arborescens stuck to each other? Inspect them and any other hydrangea arborescens you may have like Incrediball® or Invincibelle® Spirit. You may notice some leaves cupped together. It looks like the leaves above from my Invincibelle® Spirit. Interesting, huh? Don’t panic!

  Gift hydrangeas have been floating around for over 6 weeks. Between Easter just past and Mother’s Day in just a few days, it was inevitable that these traditional gift plants (also called florist hydrangeas) would show up. You can’t avoid them in local garden centers, grocery stores, and box stores.   Blooming florist hydrangeas are…

If your hydrangeas live in the milder parts of the U.S. and Europe, and the spirit moves you, you can consider pruning only your new wood blooming hydrangeas now. It’s hard to conceive of that when you live where I do. Last March we had 3 Nor’easters. Not only did they bury everything, but the…

Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to learn about the language of hydrangea flowers. We’re talking here about the most popular hydrangea: mophead, hortensia, pompom or big leaf. Botanically, it’s hydrangea macrophylla. Although we know this plant originated in Asia, we also know from fossil discoveries that it existed 40-65 million years ago in North…