Hydrangeas are voluminous shrubs with lasting flowers. They are easy to grow even in windy locations and the flowers are good for cutting (add a little liquid soap and sugar to the water so they last longer). As the name suggests they like water or at least a moisture retentive soil.
- New Hydrangeas can be planted in Autumn with a good mulch of shredded bark or compost.
- In Spring cut out old flower heads and dead stems. Cut just above an outward facing bud.
- To make the flowers blue add Aluminium Sulphate to the soil. Lime makes them pink.
- In summer cut out any leafless stems.
- Buy new plants in bloom so you know what the flowers look like. Avoid plants with brown or spotted leaves.
- Hortensa Hydrangeas look like pompoms or mopheads often seen at seaside locations. Lacecap varieties open flat. Paniculata and quercifolia have conical flowers often white.
For more information try All about Hydrangeas
I believe that flowers should not be cut, as it will not flower next season… Instead I jsut leave old flowers all through the winter.
For blue flowers, before planting them, I put some iron bits (nails or something) under a root. This makes soil acidic enough to have blue flowers. But this only can be done with pink flowers, if flowers are white – you cant change them.
Quite right about white flowers even those that fade to pink will not change colour due to the soil.
If you cut a third of the flowers you will have oodles and it won’t make an appreciable difference next year
Thanks for the comments