How To Grow Gorgeous Hydrangeas // Gardening with Creekside

there are a handful of flowers that are absolutely classic and synonymous with summer hydrangeas are one of those they can be exceptionally easy to grow when you know the basics stay with me and i will give you a great hydrangea 101. hey friends it is jenny welcome to gardening with creekside today we're going to go over hydrangeas all the basics that you need to know about hydrangeas so that you can have absolutely gorgeous flowers during the summer i love hydrangeas they're really easy to grow when you know the basics so what i want you to do is we're going to pause this video for a minute you're going to go grab your favorite drink your notepad we're going to stay right here go do that because we're going to take some notes all right now now that you have your stuff we're going to go over hydrangeas because we're going to go a little scientific because you've got to know a little science behind the hydrangeas in order to grow them well okay so here we go there are several different types of hydrangeas different species if you will of hydrangeas and depending on the species will depend on how you care for them so the first one is what i just call the old-timey hydrangea now a little latin here this is going to be the macrophilia species of hydrangeas these are the kinds that our grandmothers grew and that you are just maybe you grew up with they are the classic mop head hydrangeas just that nice pretty ball the classic hydrangea that you think of now with these guys they like to be in the shade they are not sun hydrangeas so remember shade about four hours or less of sun they like to have consistent moisture so they cannot grow dry they need to have consistent water and they bloom on old growth now this is very important for those of you who maybe have not had blooms for years and you're like why am i not getting any blooms one of the first questions i'm going to ask you is are you pruning your hydrangeas and i would say about 98 of the time people go yes every fall i trim those hydrangeas well that's your problem because these classic they're called the big leaf hydrangeas bloom on old growth during the summer right now they are already making their buds for next year so if you cut them at any point basically from mid-summer anywhere till the next spring you are removing all of your flowers for the following year so the best thing for these big leaf hydrangeas is to just absolutely leave them alone if you do have to prune them do it immediately after they bloom of course hydrangeas make great vases great bouquets so if you need to shape up your hydrangea and you need to give it a little tweak maybe it's getting a little too big go ahead and just cut off all your blooms make gorgeous bouquets for your house give them to your friends whatever trim it back shape it up you don't want to do a severe haircut on it just get it to the shape that you need and then leave it alone very simple next we have the mountain hydrangeas those are the hydrangea serrata these are also known as lace caps so a lace cap hydrangea has a great um almost like a two sets of of blooms on it and on the edges it looks like lace with the bigger flowers petals on the edges now again these hydrangeas do not really like to be pruned and typically they are more shade in the south they can take a little bit of morning sun but they certainly cannot take that intense hot afternoon sun again they like it nice and damp nice and moist you do not want to prune them unless you absolutely have to and you would do it right after they bloom so gorgeous lace caps i love lace caps the tough stuff is a great one from proven winners it's just a high performer and they are going to be the color of the blooms will be dependent on your soil ph so depending if you have acidic or what's the word alkaline so if you have acidic or alkaline soil that will depend on what color your flowers are the big leaves are going to be that way also so they're going to be what we call soil dependent ph soil dependent on your blooms moving on to the next one are oak leaf hydrangeas now oak leaf hydrangeas are probably one of the least well-known hydrangeas but they are absolutely magnificent they are known as oak leaf because guess what their leaves look like oak leaves absolutely gorgeous nice and big they have gorgeous big kind of conical blooms on them usually are going to be like a creamy white and then they will change and maybe into a little pink oak leaves will get nice and big they can be a great specimen plant again for your shade to part shade area they can get easily some different depending on the variety like eight to ten feet tall you do not want to prune your oak leaves like they do not like to be pruned at all so you need to put it where it will have plenty of room for it to grow if you want to prune it you can simply snip off the old blooms if that just drives you crazy because i know some people those older blooms it just drives them nuts you can snip it off but you need to leave it alone other than that in the fall the foliage will turn a gorgeous like a deep red just classic fall color so it makes a great addition to that fall landscape in your garden and then a lot of times even in the winter time the bark will kind of start to peel so it has a really unique texture to it in the winter so you want to leave those alone don't prune them but they are fantastic they will be long living for your shade garden next we are going to go to one of my favorites i have probably two favorites so this is probably number two so these are called smooth hydrangeas and these hydrangeas are part of the arborescens species and they are actually native to the southeast area of north america so they do great here they um actually start to like some full sun so you can put more sun on these guys full sun to park sun you really are going to want to watch your zones for your specific variety of hydrangea one of my all-time favorites is proven winter's incredible just an absolutely gorgeous big huge mop head that classic creamy white is absolutely gorgeous so these smooth hydrangeas are also sometimes called like annabelle hydrangeas remember we've talked about this before annabelles are just that classic hydrangea that is part of this family the incrediball is one that has been bred to be a little stronger stem so they don't flop really really sturdy great blooms on it again we said full sun to part sun average to moist so they can go just a hair drier than your other hydrangeas and you can prune these because they bloom on new growth this is why we love them so much they bloom on new growth so that means in the early spring or late winter you can actually prune them back by a third or a half of their size one of our customers told me this little tip which i absolutely loved she said that her mama told her think of valentine's day you trim back your flowering shrubs on valentine's day because valentine's day a lot of times you get flowers so valentine's day flowers oh that reminds me i need to go trim my flowering shrubs for this coming year so hopefully that will help some of you to remember when to prune these great hydrangeas so they bloom on new growth you trim them back at valentine's day then in the spring once they put out that new flush of blooms then they're actually putting on their buds right there i love these because you're guaranteed blooms every single year with those old-timey big leaf hydrangeas you could if you pruned it at the wrong time if you had a late freeze then it would kill those buds and you could go years without having any blooms at all and that's not fun for anybody so coming in next the last one we're going to talk about is probably my favorite hydrangea because it is absolutely just the easiest hydrangea i think on the market those are the panicle hydrangeas or for the latin paniculata so why do we love panicle hydrangeas well one reason is behind me behind me you will see limelight hydrangea this is from proven winters it is this particular one is probably gosh about 10 years old i planted her a long time ago and you can see that she is an absolute wonderful beast of a hydrangea every year i prune her back at that valentine's day because she blooms on new growth also i am guaranteed to have my gorgeous blooms every single year which is fantastic they can do a lot more sun than any of the other hydrangeas so this limelight that is behind me she is under some canopy of some trees but she gets direct sun in the morning half a day of sun and then the sun sets in the west which is behind the trees so she is a little bit shaded i have found for us southern gardeners that if you can give your hydrangeas a break regardless of what kind they are especially um if they're the shade ones obviously but even the ones that say full sun if you can give them a break from that late intense hot sun then that's really good because they can handle it but you will start to see by the end of july into august they start to look a little sad a little burnt just weary and tired so if you can plant them where they will receive at least six hours of sun but a little bit of break from that really hot afternoon sun then you will get a great performance from your hydrangeas panicle hydrangeas are also known as the black thumb hydrangea so if you have struggled and you cannot get your hydrangeas to bloom you just have not had success i want you to go and i want you to find a great panicle hydrangea some from proven winters that are just i can speak from experience that are fantastic obviously limelight now if you're like jenny i don't have room for that massive hydrangea at my house totally get it no worries go for a little lime little lime is just the dwarf version of limelight three to five feet tall still all the same characteristics all the color bloom is fantastic fire light is another great one it starts out this creamy white it turns to pink and then it will be an intense red late in the summer we have these growing on the bank behind the silverberries gorgeous absolutely stunning and then of course you cannot forget about bobo bobo is another great panicle hydrangea from proven winners gorgeous big huge creamy white blooms a little petite it's not as big and it is a great hydrangea so i hope this has helped answer some of your questions as far as pruning location it really does when you go to your local nursery if you will look at the tag you need to know what kind it is so is it a macrophilia is it an arborescens is it a panicle is it an oak leaf those things do matter because it's going to matter where you put it in your garden and how you treat it in the coming years because if you do just the basic things to it and give it just a little bit of tlc it will give you years and years of gorgeous blooms now one thing we have not talked about because we're not really talking about specific hydrangeas just highlighting one hydrangea i want you to look at your zones so if you do not know what your growing hardiness zone is just google what is the hardiness zone for and put in your zip code and it will tell you what you are so of course you all know by now that we are in north carolina in dallas we are a zone 7b i like to pick plants that give me a bit of a buffer for my growing zone so what does that mean it means that i like to get plants that are at least cold hardy to a five and really heat tolerant at least to a nine now the exception is is this limelight she is to an eight but because she gets a lot of the break from the afternoon sun i feel okay so if you are in zone eight maybe you wanna look for your buffer to be from a six to a nine or a ten if you're a zone five you wanna look for your buffer to be a zone three to seven so you've got to really kind of pay the attention to what your growing zones are and do you kind of lie right there if you do and you put it in the right location with the right sun she's going to give you lots and lots of blooms for years and years to come hope this was helpful if you have any questions put it in the comments below i will do my best to answer them make sure you like this video thank you so much for gardening with creekside you all have a fantastic day and we'll see you in the next video bye

Channel: Gardening with Creekside

Views: 55,359

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Keywords: Gardening with Creekside, Creekside Nursery, Garden Tour, Proven Winners, Plant Nursery, Southern Gardens, perennial flowers, proven winners plants, Gardening, Nursery, Plants, Jenny, creekside nursery, gardening in the south, garden, gardener, gardening, plant, plants, sun, flower, diy, growing, nursery, summer, dirt, hydrangea, butterfly, nc, horticulture, master gardener, charlotte nc, garden tour, gardening 101, nursery tour, north carolina, cottage garden, hydrangeas, blooms, proven winners

Id: dQ--JzOsjcA

Length: 15min 46sec (946 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 18 2020