Hydrangeas...The Stars of Summer!

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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

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.

The Garden In May, Part II

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Welcome to the backyard, the most challenging part of the garden.  It is big, it is shady as well as very sunny in parts, and it is the playpen of Madison, our Westie, and Lily the lab.    It is a joint effort between my daughter and me and we argue consult constantly on what goes in and what comes out.   We have learned to compromise and to pick our battles.  Some of them carry over from one year to the next, but we are still friends...until the next battle.

The grass is the biggest headache in the back.  We have drainage problems due to a sloping yard that guides the water down to the creek on the other side of the fence when we have big storms.  We can only plant fescue in the Fall,  so this year we will have to live with big empty patches.  It irritates me to no end but life is not perfect.  Neither is our yard.

The hostas are the stars of the year.  They are on steroids! Keep in mind this is only the second week in May.

The New Dawn rose by the bird house.  No tenants this year.  Coco, has done a good job of keeping new parents away.

Confederate jasmine planted three years ago.

The peonies have also had a good year.

A closer look of the birdhouse.

This year's project is the path to the fence which gets very muddy when it rains. Those are flats of sedum I purchased at Lowe's.  We'll see how they do.  I've left the right side open so we can have access to the other side of the fence.

Madame Mere's private garden.

The climbing Japanese hydrangea with Mountain Laurel in back is by the gate that separates the front and back garden.  It leads to MM's apartment from the outside.

And here's Coco, whose help in patrolling the yard and keeping it free of bunnies is indispensable in the preservation of this garden, particularly the hostas.  We are lucky to have a fence and a Westie to keep the deer away.

Next up, my domain...the front yard.