I love hydrangeas! They have become synonymous with early summer for me. This blog post is an ode to this incredibly beautiful plant. There are several types of hydrangeas but my favorite is the mophead (hyrangea macrophylla) variety. Most have blooms of blue or pink. Part of what fascinates me about this plant is that, unlike most other plants, the bloom color can change dramatically from year to year. It is also common to have different colors of blooms on a single bush (as shown below), or even in a single bud.

This hydrangea bush in my garden has blooms of blue, purple and pink. When I first planted it four years ago the blooms were all pink.

The photo above shows a single bloom that contains all three colors of the mophead variety. Each bloom is truly a work of art!

A recent  wedding client, Elena Cohen Chowdhury, was so inspired by the beauty of hydrangeas that she planned her wedding colors all around this incredible plant. She knew that they would be in bloom in time for her June 3, 2012 wedding to Simon Chowdhury at Fearrington Village.

Some quick fun facts about hydrangeas. First it is easy to change pink blooms to blue by adding aluminum to the soil. The old wive’s tale is that you throw rusty nails in the hole before planting them if you want mostly blue blooms. You don’t necessarily need to prune your mophead hydrangea for the health of the plant. But if you need to because it is getting too large for the space allotted, always prune them fairly soon after the blooms are spent as the new buds grow on old wood. So if you were to wait several months to prune this bush, you would actually be cutting off next year’s blooms. Happy gardening!

Thanks for reading! I am always looking for great photo stories to tell in the Chapelboro area. If you know of someone or something that should be documented please write to me at kpophoto@chapelboro.com.

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