Hydrangeas +

There are so many different types of hydrangeas available for the home garden and for good reason. In most cases, they are relatively easy to grow and offer a wide range of sizes, flower types and colors. In our gardens we have a few but maybe in the future we will add to them.

This is one of our three Limelight hydrangeas. It is located in full sun and so tends to open it’s blooms a little bit ahead of the other two that are located in the partial shade of our shed. Perhaps it gets it’s name form the fact that as the blooms are close to opening they tend to have a lime color to them.

Next to the shed is another limelight hydrangea and you can see that the blooms are not nearly as far along as the one in the full sunlight spot.

These snowball hydrangeas were growing in front of our house when we moved here in July of 1977. They are an old fashioned variety with smaller blooms than the more popular ones of current times. What they lack in showy blooms though is made up for with resilience. We moved them to the edge of the woods in poor soil with no water shortly after moving in. Over time they were overrun with brush and vines but just kept on blooming. Two years ago I rescued a few of them and planted them in a spot where they didn’t have the competition of other plants, even though the soil and water were poor. They have rewarded us with a very nice display. I wonder if they were planted by the house back in 1934 when the house was first built.

These three oak leaf hydrangeas were planted in fairly dense shade ten years ago and have only failed to bloom once. The name derives from the leaves that do have a resemblance to oak leaves. They turn a beautiful reddish bronze in the fall. One of the stems was low to the ground and began to grow roots, so I snipped it of and replanted it in another spot.

Not only did this rooted stem grow but It has four flowers on it as well. There were two other stems that had rooted, one I gave to my brother for his garden and another that I planted nearby but for some reason, it didn’t survive.

This is the first time this hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla) has bloomed in a long time. This type is typically found in a warmer growing zone such as Cape Cod and so it struggles to stay alive here in New Hampshire.

This is the plus I put into the title of this blog. It is a crocosmia that has been growing in this spot for twenty years or more with no fertilizer or additional water. they grow from corms each year and the patch has increased in size over time despite competing with witch grass, poor conditions and my general neglect, except when they bloom. I think they are some of the prettiest flowers in our gardens.