Hydrangea Cultivation | Volunteer Gardener

I am always on the lookout for unique and unusual plants. Even when I'm not in a nursery or garden center, if I'm out hiking in the wild, I'm looking for interesting variations on things that might be occurring naturally, or if I'm walking through a big wholesale nursery, I might be looking for that one plant that's in a pot somewhere that just looks a little bit different. I think everybody's familiar with hydrangeas. I think this was a great place to start. Let's look down at this far end first with Annabelle and Invincible Spirit. These are cultivars, cultivated varieties of one of our native species. Correct. Yes. So hydrangea arborescens. So how did we get to Annabelle? Okay, Annabelle, when a seed block was laid out at a nursery, you'd have a thousand come up. Right. Most of them come up at non-identical. They're gonna be variants in sizes. They're gonna be different, just as you would see them canoeing down the Harpeth. We have our native hydrangea all along- The Harpeth River. The Harpeth River. Right here. And say that you were canoeing along, and as you said, you like to spot things, and you saw this one seedling not have that flat head- That flat lace-cap bloom. But this giant globe bloom, and you're like, I want that for my garden. Well, you can have it, because you could go up to it, you could take a cutting of it, and then root that cutting, and it would be genetically identical to the exact one you saw. And that's how we come up with cultivars. Now, sometimes it's from seed, and the entire plant looks different. Sometimes it's just a bloom that looks odd on that plant. On one branch. And that's how we ended up with Invincible Spirit. That was an Annabelle that had one bloom that came out on a plant pink. So the selection and the cutting was made of that plant, and then when it grew, they took more cuttings and more cuttings. So that's how we bring something new to the trade. It's not like there's mad science going on. A lot of times it's just, you're finding something natural in nature, and you're reproducing that one thing again and again. And that makes a great cultivar then. A lot of it is luck. In the case of, especially of spotting things out in nature, a lot of it is luck. And a lot of it is sort of training your eye to things that are different and unique and unusual. Now, I know also that in addition to Invincible Spirit, which is this soft pink, then the hybridizers have gotten involved. Sometimes it's little backyard hybridizers who are more hobbyists. Sometimes it's gigantic corporate nurseries that do hybridizing and that sort of thing, working on specific projects. For instance, now I think there's one called Invincible Ruby, which is an even deeper pink, bordering on red, not really what we would maybe consider a true red, but an even deeper color. And that was brought to us by selective breeding, sowing seed and then choosing a single plant that was a little darker in color and then working with that and going on, another two or three generations. And the same thing has happened. The same kinds of things have happened, not just in hydrangea arborescens, but also in hydrangea quercifolia, the oak leaf hydrangea, which I think is one of our favorite, certainly one of my favorite landscape plants and a favorite native. But we do have many cultivars, many cultivated varieties of oak leaf hydrangea. So let's talk a little bit about some of those. Ruby Slippers right here in front of me, which is a more dwarf variety. That was created by Sandy Reed down at the research station in near McMinnville. And then what about this one in the middle? Tough stuff. And it's more of one that we're trialing. It's been brought to the market. It's worn, not as common. And the selection has, as you can see, it's a lighter, more yellow leaf. So when planting oak leaves in the shade, sometimes you want something to brighten up. Just a little brighter. Right. And it's not gold really, but a little lighter green, a little kind of a chartreuse green. It is incredibly durable and tough, hence the name, and can handle a little bit more wet. A lot of oak leaves don't like wet. Wet soil. Annabelle hydrangeas on the other hand can handle the wet soil. Sure. The reason why there are a lot more oak leaf varieties than arborescent varieties is because the selections, you can cross-pollinate. Right. The Annabelle hydrangea is sterile. Mostly sterile, yeah. Right, so it's more difficult to create new varieties with something that doesn't produce seed. So you're able to take one flower and another flower, cross-pollinate, and end up with a lot of seed variation. And that has happened in oak leaf hydrangea quite a bit, but there also are a lot of just natural selections. People, sharp-eyed plants people out there who have seen something that's just a little bit different. And that would be the case with something like Snow Queen. Yes. Where if you saw a wild population of just straight oak leaf hydrangea, hydrangea quercifolia growing out in the wild, most of those plants would have a kind of pendulous bloom almost. Snow Queen is different because her blooms stand upright. And they're very large. They're not as large in a container situation, but once you get them in the ground, big, tall, 12-inch blooms that stand upright all over the plant. Massive and beautiful. Yeah, and so some sharp-eyed plants person out there noticed that this plant was different and said, hey, we're gonna propagate this. If it proves itself over a period of time, we're gonna name it and introduce it to the industry. And I think Snow Queen is one of our great landscape plants. The thing is 20 years ago, every cultivar of, there weren't as many varieties of oak leaf hydrangea out there, and they were all big. They were all large growing landscape plants, six by six, eight by eight, 10 by 10. Then a couple of varieties, Pee Wee and Sykes Dwarf came along 25 years ago or so. They were smaller in stature, but not necessarily the greatest plants. They're kind of shy, flowering. They were weak in disease issues with them. Right. For foliar problems. Foliar problems. You can see the ones that are selected now have a lot better foliar. Yeah, cleaner leaves, not as much fungal spotting and that sort of thing. And that's another thing that a keen eye or a grower or a breeder is looking for. It's not always just the bloom. And I mentioned Sandy Reed a few minutes ago, and we actually did a segment with her probably 15 years ago when Ruby Slippers and Munchkin were getting ready to come to market. And so Sandy took it a step further, and this is where we get human involvement. She did the hybridizing on using dwarf varieties of oak leaf hydrangeas that were available to come up with varieties that were truly compact, dense, heavy flowering, and a much better selection for home gardeners than what was currently available on the trade. So she saw a need, a gap in the market, if you will, and spent 20 or 25 years of her life creating these new oak leaf hydrangeas. And a lot of the ones that she started with were ones just like you talked about, people found in native blocks. What she accomplished was that she brought them all together to one spot and allowed all the dwarf ones from different places to cross pollinate and then sow those seeds and make selections of the healthiest. Generations and generations, I mean, years worth of work, decades really worth of work that went into this on the front end. And you mentioned native blocks. I can remember going with our old buddy Don Shadow one time down to the northern part of Alabama where there are a lot of oak leaf hydrangeas. And one of these came from there, but he took me to a place where there were naturally occurring double-flowered forms. There's a variety called Harmony that has huge sterile flowers. They're kind of floppy and they don't hold their heads up very well. But it was amazing to me to see the natural diversity in our native populations. And I guess my point is that I think sometimes when we see a variety, a cultivar of something, we assume that it's not native, but it is. It is a special selection of, it may have had involvement like Sandy's Varieties from one of us as a hybridizer, or it may have just been a keen-eyed nurseryman, plantsman who saw an opportunity to introduce something new and unique to the market. Thank you so much for giving us a little bit of insight. We could stand and talk about this all day across all varieties of plants, but just a little bit of insight about what goes into selecting new varieties of plants. We really appreciate it. Thanks for coming out. Yeah. Anytime. Hydrangeas are probably one of my favorite shrubs. And I love the idea that people have taken the time to hybridize and work with them to where homeowners with smaller backyards are wanting just that patio potted plant. Right. You now can have an oak leaf. Can also enjoy them too. Can also enjoy them as well. Thanks so much. Thank you. If you liked this video, we've got a wide range of gardening related topics here on our channel. Home garden tours, plant showcases, tips from growers, and much more. Take a dive into our archive and be sure to click to subscribe so you can catch all of our new topics. Until next time.