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07/19/2018 12:01 AMWith hydrangea season in full bloom, Natureworks Garden, 518 Forest Road, Northford is hosting Lorraine Ballato for an educational talk on how to have success with hydrangeas on Saturday, July 21 at 10 a.m. The cost is $20 and registration is limited to 25 people. Register at www.naturework.com. Ballato will also sign her recently published book, Success with Hydrangeas.
More information is available at naturework.com or by calling 203-484-2748.
For most people, the hydrangea is a summertime classic. They come in all shapes and sizes and many colors including white, pink, blue, cream, lime, and purple. They are great cut flowers and great dried flowers. They speak of beach cottages and summer picnics and lazy days. Yet, as a genus, hydrangeas are one of the most complex collection of plants you could grow. For more than 30 years Natureworks has taught customers how to grow hydrangeas and especially how to prune hydrangeas. Yet people keep coming back, year after year, with the same questions.
Some of those questions are answered in Success with Hydrangeas, published earlier this year. Ballato, from Brookfield, has been studying and researching hydrangeas for a long time.
The first part of the book breaks down hydrangeas into the five common species. This alone is valuable information, especially because branded plants with catchy names often blur the lines between them. For example, here is a list of popular hydrangeas:
• Pinky Winky
• Tiny Tuff Stuff
• Strawberry Sundae
• Invincibelle Spirit
• Gatsby’s Moon
• Little Lime
• Pee Wee
• Lets Dance Moonlight
• Cityline Paris
• Twist and Shout
So, it’s become complicated.
It didn’t used to be so complex. Back in the ’80s and ’90s, we had Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Nikko Blue.’ With giant blue flowers, we took our chances with the Connecticut weather, and sometimes it flowered beautifully, sometimes, not. There was Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle,’ with giant white flowers that always flowered, even if the shade. We grew Pee Gee tree hydrangeas with huge white flowers that turned pink and were dried for wreaths in the fall.
Things began to change in 2004 when ‘Endless Summer’ hydrangeas were introduced. This rocked the world of horticulture. In order to understand why, it is important to understand how hydrangeas bloom, which is explained in detail in Ballato’s book. ‘Endless Summer’ was the first Hydrangea macrophylla to bloom on old and new wood. After that, reblooming hydrangeas started being introduced until now, we have so many it’s hard to keep them straight, never mind figuring out which ones really are the best for each yard.
The next big hydrangea news was the introduction of Hydrangea arborescens ‘Bella Anna,’ a pink hills-of-snow hydrangea. In the past, this totally hardy genus had white flowers only. This also rocked the hydrangea world. Meanwhile, hydrangea breeders took note of the fact that one of the hardiest genuses was Hydrangea paniculata, our old-fashioned, late-summer-blooming tree hydrangea. It was tall, it was showy, and it was reliable, but it was late and it was really big. So, they got to work and started breeding shorter varieties with earlier flowers with brighter pink color, even approaching red.
Choosing the right hydrangea for each yard can indeed be complicated. Once that decision is made, the next decision is where to plant it. Sun or shade? Morning or afternoon sun?
After explaining all the various hydrangea family members, Ballato’s book Success with Hydrangeas goes on to explain how to grow them, prune them, site them, protect them from pests, and use them in the landscape.