Wayside Gardens Voices

Try Hydrangea CitylineTM Venice In a Container!

Hydrangeas are a great choice for containers! With their interesting foliage, beautiful blooms, and enticing fragrance, they're a lovely, low-maintenance selection for the small-space garden.

One variety that performs particularly well in containers is the dwarf marvel, Hydrangea CitylineTM Venice. Venice's compact habit contrasted with huge leaves and bright pink blooms makes for a pronounced look that works really well in patio gardens. It produces more flowering stems than your average hydrangea, and the leaves maintain their beautiful deep green from spring until frost.

Most Popular Plants For January 2009

If you were wondering what's going to be hot in gardening this spring, January is always a good indicator. Everyone has gotten their catalogs and they are eager to start digging.

Our best seller this month, by far, was the Hydrangea 'Incrediball' - you can't help but be impressed by the look of this beautiful plant. It's like growing clouds in your garden with its enormous, fluffy clusters of pure white blooms. Hydrangeas usually do well - everyone loves the 'Endless Summer' and the Angel Collection, but Incrediball has really been a hit so far this year.

Other big hits have been the incredibly florific Syringa 'Bloomerang' and the brilliant Paeonia 'First Arrival, our number 2 and 3 top selling plants. For the complete list of Wayside's top-selling plants check here: Wayside's Most Popular Plants For January.

Hydrangeas: Easy Winter Pruning Tips

Hydrangea pruning rules vary from one variety to the next, but none of them are too complicated. The easiest to remember is white-blooming hydrangeas - most white hydrangeas bloom on new wood and can be pruned as soon as the blooms fade. If you haven't pruned your white hydrangea this winter, you can go ahead and cut them back for full spring blooms.

For most macrophyllas, mopheads, and oakleaf hydrangeas, blooms form on at least one year-old stems. If you prune too severely you will not have any blooms. Other than cleaning out the dead and ugly parts, it's best to leave these alone unless your plant has become too large.

If you are pruning for cut-flowers, your goal is not to make the plant look pretty, but to get the best blooms on long straight stems. First, remove all of the dead or dying material that you would normally remove. Second, you will cut the plant back to about a third of its current size. Cutting the plant really low, will force it to grow long stems, which is exactly what your want.

For more information check our Wayside Garden's Hydrangea Growing Guide.

The Types of Hydrangea Plants

For many years now Hydrangea has been one of the most popular perennials in American gardens.  The variety of these great shrubs that is available now is quite impressive, far from being just the one-colored puffballs that you remember from your grandmother's garden.  There are 23 species of Hydrangea, but of these only five are widely available in the US.  The five that are available, though, represent a great variety of flowering perennials, with an option that is right for almost any American gardener.

The Hydrangea that you're most likely familiar with is the Hydrangea macrophylla (more commonly called Garden Hydrangea, French Hydrangea, or just Hydrangea).  These plants produce impressive bounties of flowers.  In many Garden Hydrangeas, the color of the flowers can be changed from red or pink to white or bright blue by adjusting the chemical content of the soil in which they're growing.  Garden Hydrangeas have come a long way in recent years, including several new cultivars that now produce buds on new wood in spring, which allows them to flower even if they autumn buds are killed in the winter.  Many of the new varieties are much more interesting, as well, including the Cityline Dwarf Hydrangeas and Halo Hydrangeas.

Panicle Hydrangeas (Hydrangea paniculata) are the most cold-hardy of the common species.  They are the largest type as well, some growing to fifteen feet.  These Asian natives are often pruned into tree form and sold as "Hydrangea trees."  They bloom in mid-summer, usually with large white flowers on six- to eighteen-inch panicles.  In some varieties of Panicle Hydrangea the white flowers mature to pink.

There are two species that are native to the US.  The larger of the two is the Oakleaf Hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia).  Much like the Panicle Hydrangeas, Oakleafs bloom with large white panicles that mature to pink or rose.  These flowers come sooner, in early summer, and are smaller, on four- to twelve-inch panicles.  Oakleaf Hydrangeas are unique, though, in that they are often grown primarily for their beautiful foliage, which matures to a deep bronze in fall.  Oakleafs are the only common Hydrangea to produce significant fall color.

The smaller American native is the Smooth Hydrangea (Hydrangea arborascens).  These can be found in the wild from New York to Florida, and are nearly as cold-hardy as the Hydrangea paniculata.  Smooth Hydrangeas have the advantage over the Panicles, though, in that they are much better adapted to warm weather.  Smooth Hydrangea grow to four or five feet high and in early to mid-summer produce large round clumps of bright white flowers that sometimes mature to a lovely pale green.  These shrubs are most often used in mass landscape plantings to striking effect.

The fifth (and most unusual) specie is the Hydrangea anomala, or Climbing Hydrangea.  These are true clinging vines that can grow to astonishing size.  They've been known to climb structures and buildings as high as eighty feet tall, which, in full bloom of large white lacecaps, is a truly awe-inspiring sight.

Interesting Hydrangea: Not Just Pink Puffs

Hydrangea are some of the best flowering shrubs around.  They're remarkably easy to grow and bloom reliably with great displays.  However, because they're prevalent and mostly display showy blooms, they don't appeal to a lot of younger gardeners who associate them with their grandmother's garden.  There are, though, a lot of Hydrangea choices that are much different from the "pink puff" style hydrangeas that many gardeners think of these days. 

The Halo™ Hydrangea series is one of the best of these interesting Hydrangeas  The flowers have lovely creamy color that is rare on shrubs, but it is the unique picotee edge that really sets these shrubs apart.  My favorite of these is the Hydrangea Angel Song, which features a sharp pencil-thin white picotee.

Halo Hydrangeas: Divine Picotee Petals

This brand new series of mophead hydrangeas with their huge seraphic picotee blooms are just starting to get the attention they deserve. The Halo series is a hardy group of macrophyllas with some of the most impressive blooms to be seen on a hydrangea in decades. There are four stunning varieties of Halo Hydrangeas, each with its own impressively unique habit and bloom structure.

Angel Eyes Is the newest member of the Halo Collection. This is dense, compact shrub with huge mophead blooms that is sure catch the eye. They bloom the first year you plant them and they are free bloomers - blooming on new and old wood. The huge flowers carry the distinctive serrated picotee petals that have made the Halo series so popular.

Angel Smile Is a larger shrub, growing up to 5 feet wide and tall. This cold-hardy, disease resistant hydrangea carries a subtly ruffled version of the distinctive picotee petals.

Angel Wings is another very new addition. This Halo favorite has very pronounced serrated petals on its nonstop blooms that last well into the summer. The picotee on this variety is a little different, and the petals almost seem to glow. This shrub is slightly smaller than her sisters and perfect for a container.

Angel Lace is the only lace cap variety in the Halo Line-up. It still carries the distinctive picotee blooms and this variety also gets a little bit larger at 4-5 feet wide and tall.

How to Adjust Hydrangea Color

As many of you may know, a particular hydrangea may produce pink, blue, or lavender blooms, depending on where it’s planted and how it’s fed. The presence of aluminum in the plant ultimately determines the color, and pH affects the uptake of aluminum. Alkaline soils, pH of 6.0 or more, are more likely to produce pink blooms, and more acidic soils, pH 4.5 to 5.5, produce blue flowers.

Pink flowers can be turned blue by applying aluminum sulfate to lower the pH level and add aluminum to the soil. Applying lime to raise the pH level will help blue flowers turn pink. If your soil naturally produces very blue or very pink hydrangea flowers, you may need to grow your hydrangeas in containers or raised beds to achieve the desired color without battling nature. If you do attempt to change the color of your blooms by adding these minerals, dilute them well, and add sparingly. It is very easy to scorch your plants by adding too much. By the way, white hydrangeas are not affected by efforts to change bloom color.

If you'd like to try to do this yourself, the Endless Summer Hydrangea is a perfect specimen.

Cutting Hydrangeas for Display

When cutting hydrangeas, cut them just as blooms fully develop. Cut your flowers in the early morning, before the sun comes up to evaporate some of their moisture. Cutting at diagonal will allow the stem to take in the most amount of water, some people will even cut slits or fray the ends of the stems a little. Place your freshly cut flowers in a bucket of cool water to soak for an hour or two before arranging your final product.

Once you have your flowers, use a commercial floral preservative to get the best results. This will feed your flowers, maintain a constant pH, and will serve as an anti-microbial to prevent premature decay. You should be able to find this at a local nursery. Keep in mind that many gardeners and florists complain that hydrangeas wilt faster than other cut flowers and may require a little extra planning.

John Durst
Wayside Gardens Voice

For avaiability check out: Wayside Gardens Flowering Shrubs

Color Theory and Garden Design

Collector's Edition 2007

Going beyond the rare, newest, and unique- the Wayside Gardens Collector's Edition 2007 catalog is an invaluable tool for designing a beautiful garden. We were very lucky to collaborate with Tracy DiSabato-Aust on this project , and the response so far has been tremendous. Her book, The Well-Designed Mixed Garden encourages you to view your garden as a blank canvas and the many shapes, textures and colors as your medium for artistic expression as a gardener.

This catalog focuses on color theory. On the very first page you are introduced to the color wheel and are given a little vocabulary lesson and a short explanation. The next page is DiSabato-Aust's introduction, Color Schemes for Your Garden, which explains the importance of color in designing your garden and gives a few helpful hints. The rest of the catalog is arranged according to the color wheel. Beautiful pictures of the rarest plants in the most vivid colors, including 125 brand new varieties span from the brightest reds to the deepest violets.

Order the Wayside Gardens Collector's Edition 2007 now for only $5.00.
It comes with a $5.00 coupon- so basically, if you buy something else, you got this wonderful tool for free.