A Reblooming Hydrangea with Stunning Color! | Let's Dance Sky View®

Hi, it's Stacey from Prove Winners Color Choice Shrubs, and I am here on a beautiful summer day in front of this fabulous bed of Let's Dance Sky View Reblooming Hydrangea. One of the funny things about hydrangeas is that, you know, some of the flowers might look super spectacular, have some really unique characteristics that make you go, wow. And when you look at this bed of Let's Dance Sky View, you might be thinking, well, that is a lot of flowers, but I don't necessarily see what's so special about this plant. So that's why I'm going to tell you the story of what does make this plant special, and you'll see why it's a worthy addition to your garden, and especially a great replacement for older types of reblooming hydrangeas that don't live up to their billing. So our R&D team discovered that some big leaf hydrangeas have the ability to set flower buds on the entire length of their stem rather than just at the tips. Old-fashioned hydrangeas only set flower buds at their tips. So what they started to do is to look for those plants that have that ability to bloom down the entire stem and breed with those. And the reason that that's a desirable trait is because that means that even if the plants get cut back, which you should not do, or if they get damaged from winter, there's still flower buds lower on the plant to come out and bloom. So that's the first thing that makes Let's Stand Skyview different, is it has these buds all along the length of the stem so it's better able to withstand cold or misdirected pruning when and where it should not be done. So that accounts for the old wood flowers, or the first flush of blooms, which is largely what you're seeing right here. These are the old wood blooms. But it also has a difference in the new wood blooms, or the reblooming, and that difference is that we have gotten the time that it takes the plant to set those new wood flowers down from older types of reblooming hydrangeas. So those old types needed to put on at least six nodes of growth, or six sets of leaves, before they could even set their flower bud, much less open it. So what we've been looking for in our research and development is plants that rebloom faster, that don't need to put on as much growth, because especially for those of us in cooler climates, our summers are often too cool and too short for that to even happen. And that's why you would start to see your hydrangeas bloom in like late September, rather than in July and August when you really want them to bloom. So we've gotten the time for those new wood flowers to form down considerably from the older varieties. And so what you're seeing here in these flowers that have the kind of golden stem, or are still in the bud stage, these are new wood flowers. So one thing that you'll notice that makes this plant really different from other reblooming big leaf hydrangeas is that you have still really fresh old wood flowers here, with fresh new wood flowers alongside. And that is revolutionary. So even if your plant is growing in optimum conditions, it still means you get more flowers than you would on any other hydrangea. Now one other thing that makes Let's Dance Skyview special is its color. And here in our trial gardens in West Michigan, they're pink. And the reason for that is even though our soil is slightly on the acidic side, it's heavy on sand. And sand does not contain aluminum. And for a hydrangea to be blue, which Let's Dance Skyview can do, and do so very, very beautifully, you need to have acidic soil and aluminum in the soil. Those two conditions must be true for blue flowers to form. Now we only have the acidic part down, and we don't treat these to have the aluminum to turn blue. But as you can see, they are still absolutely stunning as a pink. And if you wanted to, if yours were blooming pink and you wanted blue, it would be very easy to treat these with aluminum sulfate. And the next year you would have beautiful blue flowers instead of this really, really nice pink. The great thing about it is that no matter which color it actually blooms, it's still beautiful. And it's still a hydrangea that will actually be successful for you. It's not just going to grow, it's going to thrive, and it's going to bloom. And we know how frustrating that has been for so many people to get excited about growing hydrangeas and then not have the results that they want. And we can tell you for sure that Let's Dance Skyview hydrangea changes all of that. Our growers love it. Everyone who's bought it so far has loved it. And it truly is a revolutionary, game-changing hydrangea that deserves a spot in your garden. We have my friend and colleague Megan Mattai to thank for this amazing breeding work. Again, if you've been disappointed by other hydrangeas, I really encourage you to give Let's Dance Skyview reblooming hydrangea a try. I really think it'll change your mind about reblooming hydrangeas. Don't forget to like this video and subscribe to our channel for more hydrangea content and videos about gardening in general. Thanks for watching.