We did a landscape renovation for one of our clients in Ridgefield a couple years ago. During the landscape planning stages, the topic of hydrangeas came up. My clients love hydrangeas and their current landscape had plenty of them but the problem was the lack of flower power every season and they were wondering why. I explained to them that there are hydrangeas that flower on new wood and hydrangeas that flower on old wood. They had the standard Hydrangea macrophylla in their landscape that flower on old wood. What that means is the flower buds are formed prior to winter. More often than not, our crazy New England winters damages those buds to the point were they are dead by spring. The plan for the new landscape was to transplant their beloved Hydrangeas to the side yard and replace the old variety with a new, closely related species that flowers on both old and new wood. So with the new improved varieties, they will form flower buds throughout the growing season on new wood so they aren’t affected by winter and essentially provide more consistent flowering. I was there the other day and had to take a picture of the current state of each. Enjoy!
The new variety that flowers on new and old wood.
A picture of the old variety, taken on the same day and planted just forty feet away.