Hydrangea Season Is Here! Beautiful Blooms Around The Garden

Hi, I'm James and welcome back to my zone 5e garden in New Brunswick. Today's video is going to be mostly about hydrangeas. I will take you around the garden a little bit and highlight some of the other things in flower, but given that it is hydrangea season, the start of the panicle hydrangea season, I kind of want to go over some of that with you. I've got about 50 plus hydrangeas in the garden and we'll kind of highlight some of the ones that are more in flower now, not all of them are in flower, but some of the earlier varieties are. These bobo hydrangeas, they're not super large yet. This is the third season. This is the start of the fourth season I've had them in the ground and they're probably only not even approaching three feet yet. They're close to three feet by three feet wide. These ones I hope to get closer to four feet. It'd be nice if they came up a little bit higher. I may have to feed this. I haven't amended the soil. I've got a nice weed here. Since I created this bed four years ago, I could probably add more compost which would help, but these panicle hydrangeas are bomb-proof. As are most panicle hydrangeas, they bloom on old wood only, so you can shear these back in the fall or early spring and shape them to whatever size you want and they will produce flowers regardless. These ones do flower fairly early I find in my zone 5e garden. It is late July and the panicles started opening up probably about a week or so ago, so mid-late July these start putting on a show and they'll continue right on through to fall. Unlike other panicle hydrangeas, I find that these ones, the panicles themselves don't really fade so much to a pink. They fade slightly, but they don't produce quite the the pink show when the temperatures cool in the fall. I've got two panicle hydrangeas here along the foundation planting at the front of my home. They are at their mature size of about three feet by three feet. The one at the back is a mophead style and it is the little lime punch hydrangea and it gets a nice punchy color as the season progresses. This one in front of it is called a flare hydrangea and it has more of a lace cap style panicle, but also gets a nice pink color in the late summer and early fall. All right, these are the little quick fire panicle hydrangeas and unlike the bobo hydrangea, they are a lace cap hydrangea. They don't have the full panicle like the bobos did. They have infertile florets here in the middle and it's a real pollinator friendly hydrangea because the pollinators really like getting the nectar and pollen from that area. It's very accessible to them. The nice thing about the little quick fire is it does stay smaller on the smaller side about three feet by three feet and this particular cultivar does flower very earlier in our zone 5b garden. Probably the earliest flowering hydrangea again early mid-july. It starts forming its panicles and this one does fade to a nice pink over time. I've got another one down there and here another panicle hydrangea. Another variety of the quick fire. This is the quick fire fab and unlike the little quick fire and the original quick fire this one is a mop head. You'll see it's got a full panicle and this one is also an early bloomer. It is probably in terms of the mop head type panicle hydrangeas one of the earliest blooming ones. I think the spring sizzler which I don't have may be a little earlier blooming but this one these three here right in front of me I planted last fall as one gallon plants about this big and they tripled in size in one season. These ones will get about eight feet tall as well and about six feet wide. This is actually the back of my front border so when you're coming up from the the road this is this is the side you see but when we're sitting on our deck this is the back side and I put them to the back obviously because they will get quite large and get larger quite considerably larger than the perennials and shrubs in front of it. The cone flowers are sure flowering nice and then behind you do have the agastache and this is just a wild rutabecchia that I collected the seed from the ditch and it seems to be doing quite well here as well but this area is particularly nicely in flower right now and I'm excited to see when this panicle hydrangea reaches its full height of eight feet. You can see it's starting to turn pink in some areas this one gets really vibrant pink and even red as the nighttime temperatures slowly get cooler in the fall. This here is the invincible spirit 2. It is a smooth leaf hydrangea also referred to as an Annabelle hydrangea. It also flowers on new wood so these particular hydrangeas you can trim back in the fall after flowering or early spring to whatever shape you want. This particular one will probably get four to five feet tall and wide over time and it's only been in the ground since last fall and the blooms are fairly nice pink they will fade to a brown in time. These particular smooth leaf hydrangeas need a little bit more water I find than the panicle hydrangeas I've showed you previously. Especially in the hot summer temperatures they will fade to brown quicker if they're not hydrated more regularly. But a really nice early flowering hydrangea this extends the hydrangea season in my zone 5b garden as they flower earlier than any panicle hydrangea. All the smooth leaf hydrangeas are the first to flower and I've got several more I want to show you. In behind it you have the taller blue spiked flower that's a liatris or gay feather pairs nicely with the invincible spirit 2 and the daisies in behind that are kind of on their way out they are flopping fairly bad those ones back there I did not give them the Chelsea chop this year which tends to control their size and prevent flopping. These two hydrangeas on either side of the gate are also smooth leaf hydrangeas they are called flowerful and they are also in their second season bought as a one gallon. Mid-summer last year this particular one on the left almost died we had an extremely dry summer last year but it seems to have bounced back quite nicely. The mop head style flowers are fairly large not quite as large as the incredible but they still put on a really nice show and they're loaded with flowers they start off kind of a lime green and then will fade to a white. Particularly like these ones they stay a little smaller than the incredible and I find that their stems are a little sturdier than the incredible so they do stay upright more and the foliage is just a darker green the leaf itself looks nice and vibrant against the white flower which I like. Now we're at the back side garden and in front of us we have a couple incredible smooth leaf hydrangeas and it did rain last night and you can see some of the the mop heads drooping at the front. It does have a slightly sturdier stem than the original Annabelle hydrangea but it does have a tendency to flop nonetheless. Partly due to the size of the flower on the plant they are massive and they're probably between that and the flowerful hydrangeas these are probably my two favorite smooth leaf hydrangeas this one does get a little larger about four feet to five feet tall and wide. This is the vanilla strawberry panicle hydrangea by First Editions and I love this panicle hydrangea it does flower fairly early in our zone 5e garden as well and it gets a real vibrant pink that starts from the base and works its way up the panicle as the season progresses and it has a sturdy stem and what I like about this one unlike the I think it was a strawberry this is a strawberry sundae and unlike the vanilla strawberry the original one this one stays only about four feet tall and tall and wide so it's fairly compact and you can kind of tuck it in anywhere. This is the let's dance can do hydrangea from Proven Winners and this one does particularly well in our zone 5e garden it is a macrophylla crossed with the serrata hydrangea the macrophyllas tend to be less bud hardy and the serrata hydrangeas tend to have a little more bud hardiness this particular plant does generally die back in the fall or over the winter and early spring we usually have a full die back but it does grow back fairly quickly and the nice thing about this particular variety is it flowers on both new and old wood so although I lose all the old wood blooms they set their buds in the previous fall I do usually lose those old wood blooms with the die back in the spring but all the flowers you see here in front of me are from the new growth so it does re-bloom quite profusely and it kind of blooms all all season from about mid-july to fall. This here is a small one quart let's dance sky view hydrangea and it is like the can-do hydrangea it does re-bloom so it blooms on old and new wood this one also dies back over the winter and early spring so the blooms you see here are on new wood only and like the can-do the sky view you if you change the soil ph you can get a bluer flower our natural ph in this location is approaching neutral or slightly alkaline so you get the pink flower and here you see another new little bud on it this is just a quart size so it is really small this particular plant will get they stay they say three feet by three feet but because we get the die back in the fall or early spring um i would say in our zone we usually get it they only grow to about 18 inches to two feet tall but tall and wide and i've got a mature one i'll show you here shortly this is a more mature uh let's dance sky view hydrangea it has been in the ground i think this is the start of the third season and you can see um maybe for perspective and reference it's hard to tell but this is about 18 inches tall and maybe about two feet wide it does have more of a purple flower on it this particular location is slightly more acidic which most of our soils here i've tested are closer to slightly acidic approaching neutral this one has a lot all these flowers again this died back over uh the winter and early spring so all these little flowers here are the new wood flowers and it will flower nicely all the way to fall for frost and just at the back garden along the barn we do have a more mature bobo hydrangea here this one is approaching its mature size it's probably about three feet by three feet they can get a little larger but i just wanted to show you um just how dense it is it does flower and the nice flowering perennials surrounding it i have the same wild rutabecchia that i got from seed from the our ditch and we have some echinacea in behind it and this is a veronica speedball just a blue variety that i grew from seed it is early morning and the bees are kind of resting on the flowers they particularly like the veronica speedwell unlike the panicle smooth leaf and macrophylla slash serrata hydrangeas i've shown you previously this is a climbing hydrangea um it does prefer a part sun location in our in our climate it's fairly new i've only had it in the ground since fall of last year and this will eventually take over this whole tree about uh 40 feet high it will climb but you have to be patient with these this probably won't flower for another seven years so you do have to invest a bit of time and patience with them this is a limelight prime panicle hydrangea and unlike the original limelight hydrangea this one stays about five to six feet tall and wide so it's almost at its mature height um it does flower a little earlier than the limelight i find the limelight uh is the latest the latest flowering panicle hydrangea i have this particular one i've been thinking about pruning into a standard or tree form um as it has one main lateral here and i think uh i've been thinking about it enough and uh i'm gonna just do it and just like that i created a tree form hydrangea limelight prime um this one is a little sturdier stem than the original limelight so i think it'll make a nice standard tree form panicle hydrangea