I have Hydrangeas!!!  Now for most of you that probably isn’t big news because you probably have these gorgeous flowers every year in your yard.  Nope not me.  I have a love hate relationship with the buggers.  Many years ago I planted one lonely hydrangea on the east side of the deck, and the first couple of years and we’re talking say 30 years ago it bloomed beautiful big blue mop head flowers.  In the last 30 years it’s maybe bloomed 5 times.  Now perhaps the 6′ privacy fence has something to do with that but I always thought they liked shade.

About 8 years ago I started to become really enamored with this shrub and decided to try again.  This time I planted 2 in the back 40.  Now the back 40 is just the back fence line of our suburban lot where I have a managerie of perennials, shrubs and stuff.  Behind a flowering crab that is large and shading the entire bed.  Well this didn’t work either.  How come everyone else has beautiful blooming hydrangeas and I don’t!  I lost one of those shrubs but one was still struggling but leafing out.  Barely!  It was showing signs of an iron deficiency and my plant guru Val @ Canoyers Garden Center told me to put an iron spike in the ground next to it.  Well, I didn’t have that but I did have an iron thing of my moms that I didn’t know what to do with so I used it and you know what it worked. 

 This year there is no sign or iron deficiency and it’s growing up.  Much taller and fuller then before.  But of course still no blooms.  And yes, we got a late start in bed cleaning this year due to my father in laws passing.  Mulch is definitely in order but not until we’re thru this heat wave.

Rewind to last year.  I want hydrangeas!!!  I want them really bad.  A new place in the back 40 opens up because of the sad loss of a lilac tree and the loss of my giant garden phlox.  Now I talk to my best friend google and do some research.  Why don’t my hydrangeas bloom?  Where do you plant hydrangeas?  What type of hydrangeas grow in my 5B climate?  Well duh, hydrangeas like sun.  But how much sun?  I no longer have any garden bed space available for full sun.  Can these 2 spaces that just opened up be my opportunity?  Can I squeak enough sun out of the day to make them happy.  I go forth with new semi confidence.  Talk to my plant guru Val and select one hydrangea and it goes near the spot where I lost the lilac tree, then I check out another favorite nursery and select a different kind of hydrangea.  I stick it in the ground where it gets slightly more sun but definitely not full sun.  But, for this year it is happy and the star of the show.  

The other one, well, not so much.  No signs of buds yet.  I’m going to remain optimistic and hope for the best.  

In the meantime I planted yet another hydrangea this year, “Summer Crush”.  I wasn’t going to get sucked into this gorgeous bloom because I figured it was just a hot house show stopper annual.  Somehow I came home with one and planted it in the front bed in the southern most point of the yard.  However it gets shaded until about one.

 I’m sure I’ll kill it or it will go by the way of all my hydrangeas and just not bloom.  Of six, I have two that are blooming besides the summer crush.  The other one is in full on shade and is a smaller wispier variety but I can always count on it to bloom.  

Go figure!!!  Does anybody out there have any good advice because I’m desperate to make these work.  We shall see what the summer brings.

Happy Fathers Day to all my dads out there.  Good job!!!

Thanks for stopping

Shelley