What a year we've had!
This has been an extraordinary year for blooms. Not only for hydrangeas, but for roses, peonies, hostas and everything that comes out of the ground. Some attribute it to the mild winter we had. This past December, just before Christmas Day, we had a few days of Spring like weather when it was so warm, the daffodils started to come out. Also remember that last year we had no blooms from the hydrangeas macrophylla, aka mopheads or French hydrangeas, due to a late frost we had in Spring. My poor gardenias were decimated too, but they made a return this year with plentiful blooms.
If I have to skip a year of blooms to get this, so be it.
I started gardening "for real" when I came to this house almost four years ago. I inherited a garden "with good bones" as my friend Sandra told me. Besides, I had nothing better to do. At that time I did not even know the names of the plants I had in the garden. Some of my readers helped identify them from photos and that's how I came to know Sandra Jonas who later took me to my first hydrangea garden tour in Atlanta. That was it, I was hooked. It also helped to have been guided around some of the most beautiful gardens in Atlanta by a past president of the Hydrangea Society of Atlanta. The fact that she is not only knowledgeable and a pleasure to be with is only surpassed by her generosity and enthusiasm.
The hydrangeas you will see below are all different varieties of hydrangea macrophylla My daughter and I have bought them at different times and at different nurseries. Some of them are in the ground and came with the original garden, but others, including the pink ones in whiskey barrels where bought and planted by my daughter and me in the last three years.
We have a highly acidic soil so if they are blue they go in the ground. With the pink varieties, if we want to keep their original color, they go in one of the six whiskey barrels we have around the property. It's as simple as that!
For me, though, this is the star of the show...Hydrangea Shooting Star, a baby just a year ago!
We have oak leaf hydrangeas also, but they are too small still to brag about! They each have one bloom, but what a bloom! The hydrangeas paniculata are starting to form buds. I am sure they will be spectacular too.
Enjoy the show!
Hydrangea macrophylla Mathilda
What a great place for a tunnel....hmm
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| Another hydrangea Mathilda |
I still have the front to share so stay tuned!
All photos by Lindaraxa
Please do not share without direct attribution and credit back to this blog.
I love your red/pink hydrangeas, although I have yet to get over my reluctance for the blue ones. However, when I was growing up, a blue hydrangea in our rather neglected yard was one of the few reliable flower producers (apart from the apple and plum trees).
ReplyDelete--Jim
Jim, like you, I couldn't stand them. As a matter of fact I used to hate blue flowers, period... and now look at me. They have grown on me and there are so many new varieties and variations. Did you see the one that is both blue and pink?! I agree, those pink/white ones as to die for.
DeleteI'm having some problems coming to your blog for some unknown reason and this may not be the right place to post a comment. Hard to explain but having trouble placing a comment here as well. Computers????? I wanted to share with you that if you have a place for some more hydrangeas you might plant a Limelight. I have three and they are gorgeous, the shape is more like an oakleaf but they begin as a lime color and then become more white. However, I have never had good luck drying any white hydrangeas but Limelight dries beautifully. I think you should be able to get them in your area.
DeleteLoved seeing all your hydrangeas, my favorite flower. I cut mine almost everyday to enjoy indoors. In N FL the humidity is killer right now. I tried gardening for a couple of hours this morning and it almost did me in. Fall cannot come soon enough for me, I will be able to garden a little more, my passion.
Carolyn
Carolyn, I have a couple of Limelights!! and you are right they are beautiful and dry well. We are farther north than you so it will be another month before they come into full bloom.
DeleteI never liked hydrangeas THAT much until I moved here and began to see the different types and colors. up in CT all we had "in the olden days" were white and blue mopheads, and the blues were not that great. Here our soil is very acid so the blues turn a deep and beautiful color.
My daughter is the hydrangea police and gets mad when we cut and bring them in so I try just to cut the ones lying on the ground or in back of the bush. Then I have to give her a million explanations!
Im sorry you had trouble reaching my blog and appreciate your going through all that trouble to leave a comment. Will look into it. Thanks!
Carolyn, I think I've fixed the problem. It has to do with the https new encryption thing. If you are still having problems will you let me know at lindaraxa@gmail.com thanks!
DeleteMine (Limelights) are just beginning to show bloom too. My other hydrangeas, French Blues are looking beautiful with lots of blooms. The Limelights just beginning to bloom will last through the summer. BTW, we had an awful day here with temps almost into triple digits but the humidity is KILLER. DH thinks we have a hurricane due this year, I hope not.
DeleteI had no problem coming to your blog this evening. I thought it might be computer issues with my computer????
Carolyn
It was a quiet season last year so we are due for fireworks soon. Everything this year has been phenomenal. Can't wait to see those limelights.
DeleteDon't fret, I actually think it was the https thing on mine. You are on blogger too. Go to settings and make sure you redirect yours. Turn button to ON
Madonna once famously turned up her nose at some hydrangeas that someone presented to her, saying that she hated hydrangeas. I love them though, especially since the blue ones which always remind me of Cape Cod. I also have some pink ones and the ones called Blushing Bride (pale pink and cream). My favorites are the lace-cap ones called Lady in Red.
ReplyDeleteI love the lace caps too, although the one I have has never bloomed. I've had to move it, first too much sun, now too much shade. If it doesn't bloom this year it never will!
DeleteWhat a show, indeed! My mother had a fine row of pink hydrangeas in her London garden that, I believe, she would turn blue by burying rusty nails in the soil.
ReplyDeleteYou must spend all day in your garden lapping up its beauty. And, it is lovely to learn that you became a serious gardener just a few years ago. One of the best gardens I know belongs to a friend that only started gardening upon retirement. Just goes to show, it is never too late to start anything you have an interest in. Keeps life interesting I suppose.
Gorgeous specimens---really dazzlingly lovely!
ReplyDeleteIn his book The Glass of Fashion, Cecil Beaton tells of the 20th century tastemaker, Madame Errazuriz, going into her garden in Biarritz armed with scissors, decapitating all the blossoms from the hydrangea plants. Her belief was that they looked very much better as green plants. ...which might have influenced Madonna's distaste for hydrangeas, now that I think of it.
lol I was wondering why you had sent me a picture of that ugly woman! I was about to reply with a few ???.
DeleteBTW Madonna probably never heard of Cecil Beaton, never mind MR. It's a tough plant to like. I have to admit I never liked them much until I inherited them and went to that show. Now I'm all in!
Madonna not only heard of Cecil, she once lived in what was his country house, Ashcombe. So then she must have absorbed his writings about Taste to some extent!
DeleteOoops...!though I doubt she absorbs anything from her neck up. She ' s quite the performer though!
ReplyDelete