Not one but three hydrangeas bewitched me this summer

(Disclaimer {already}. Over the years I have fallen for just about any hydrangea I have met. You might consider me an inconstant gardener. Maybe even a fickle one? So I won’t hold it against you if you call my current swoon chaff in the wind.)

Before I divulge the particulars of this summer’s fling, I must confess to you my past reckless dalliances.

1. The Oak Leaf Hydrangea

A long time ago we visited Bellingrath Gardens near Mobile, Alabama. I was dazzled by oak leaf hydrangeas, a southeastern native and the state flower of Alabama, so of course I went on a hydrangea hunt.

The fall color on oak leaf hydrangeas can be outstanding, too, especially in northern gardens.

Can you blame me for my infatuation?

2. The Big Leaf Hydrangea

A decade ago, on a tour of Ireland I rekindled my romance with the big leaf hydrangeas, or mopheads, that overflowed gardens, castles, and roadsides. The misty moisty shrouds that embrace the Emerald Isle must coddle hydrangeas, too.

Still charged up from my Irish fling, I put a future trip to Brittany on my archived bucket list. The French call them hortensias, and I understand they are everywhere in this rocky coastal peninsula west of Paris, along with great seafood and wonderful breads. (But I must stop dreaming.)

This fancy for mopheads and lacecaps was actually a long, thirty-year relationship with countless varieties of hydrangeas we grew in North Carolina.

The decades long liaison only ended when we moved from North Carolina.

3. The Climbing Hydrangea

Half a century ago I was smitten by a magnificent specimen in flagrant full bloom at the gateway to a New England arboretum. A few years later, it had vanished, guilty of being too bold and sassy, I guess. Maybe standing in the way of botanical-garden progress?

I was attracted by the plant’s bold and eccentric, rangy, opportunistic growth. When I finally stumbled on one in a nursery, I planted it near a corner post in our courtyard. He was the rugged bad boy of our hydrangeas.

This climber was not supposed to do particularly well in our Zone 8 coastal clay, but after an initial struggle with Japanese beetles, it galloped full speed, not up because there was no tall support nearby, but along the fence in a blast of exuberance that matched my heady delight.

It might have preferred to climb. . .

 

Ah, the climbing hydrangea, a show-off when it blooms, but an adversary if it needs pruning.

4. Annabelle Hydrangea

We’ve always loved the snowball bush. As kids my sisters and I picked bouquets. Our children loved the snowballs that bloomed in June, and they took bouquets to their first grade teachers. So sweet Annabelle has been with me for many decades.

Many years later, the pristine white native Annabelle hydrangea cast its spell on me again when a friend told me how much she wanted a white hydrangea and asked me to propagate one.

The cuttings came from a voluptuous nursery plant that had triggered the clasp on my wallet. The cuttings grew and prospered.  In fact, I brought one of those plants with me to New Hampshire, unaware that her sisters were wildly growing in the shade of our stately old hemlock.

It looks like I will never lose this old friend.

5. The PeeGee Hydrangea

My latest botanical true loves, three of them, kept my heart fluttering and my camera clicking this summer. Here are their stories in pictures.

Full disclosure before we begin: PeeGees are among the most forgiving of hydrangeas, even in eastern North Carolina clay. They bloom on the current year’s growth so there is no loss of flower buds during an inclement winter.

But their best flower color is produced with ample water and nighttime temperatures below 70 degrees. (Which can probably be said of most other hydrangeas.) This summer was one of the kindest: rainy with cool nighttime temperatures. 

If weather takes a dry turn next summer and frills brown early, will I be so hearty in my endorsement? And  will I then ignore dowdy blooms if perky asters or chrysanthemums or heliopsis arrive to distract me?

View From the Living Room

At the edge of our patio, magnificent this year but still diminutive against the Norway Spruce, is a small tree that coaxes us to spend time close by most every afternoon when the sun lights up its blooms.

The profligate blooms you see in these pictures hide debilitating wounds from an icy winter.

The first snow was only a few inches, but it was icy and bowed branches to the ground. We ignored the possible damage

The tree was scarred and crippled. Splints and bungees did not work to set branches in place. Multiple amputations of large limbs created a lopsided skeleton of a plant.

We could not imagine anything but a dismal recovery and a half-hearted bloom. Instead, this resilient plant grew into a lovely specimen that restored our faith in the miracle of nature.

How could you not love a survivor like this?

The Hemlock-Hydrangea Duo

It looks like a little sister leaning on a big brother for help, but this is an old, old, tough plant.

Last year Bob spent a lot of time pruning out dead limbs and crowded branches and shaping the crown, hoping to produce an elegant vase shape.  But the peegee grew so quickly during our wet spring and summer, its new stems were not strong enough to support the magnificent blooms that, fostered by the rain. burst through,

Big and bold in the back forty

This blunderbuss of a plant (Hey, it’s my plant. I can call it all sorts of names, but don’t you dare make any cracks about it!) was probably never pruned.

This burly bush gave us unexpected gifts.

Before the arborists piled up the wood chips I cleaned debris from the bed. There, in among the weeds, were more than a dozen stripling peegee hydrangeas, seedlings from this great big teddy bear of a bush.

I dug and potted them, then hid them under the protective shade of the Norway spruce so I could forgot about them. In our summer of rain, they grew spectacularly. And some even bloomed in the low light.

What was I going to do with all those pots of hydrangeas that were ready to take their places in the landscape with nowhere to go?

During a walk one day I spotted a hedge of peegees lining a driveway. I’d seen it many times before, admired it, and walked on with a smile. Now it became an inspiration.

Each plant in the hedge usually sported the traditional vase shape, but this year, like our old hydrangeas, limbs were weighed down by branches that had grown too quickly in rainy weather and bore outsized luscious panicles of bloom.

I decided that some of my potted plants would become a chorus line of peegee hydrangeas along one of our fences.  Fortunately, Bob was a willing partner, since he would be digging the holes and weed whacking the area (which will eventually be covered with thick layers of newsprint and topped with mulch).

My love affair with hydrangeas will go on and on, I expect.

I have other varieties of peegees: Bobo, Red Sprite, Limelight, Little Quickfire, each with endearing qualities, just beginning residency in my garden. And there are more recent varieties of mopheads and lacecaps, oak leafs and arborescens out there in the plant world.

But none can compare with those old-timey hydrangeas that may have no botanical pedigree but that have survived and bloomed for decades. And therein lies my loyalty.