I agree, those are all great varieties. I ended up picking up a few firelights because from what I saw, at least at the nursery, the size of the flowers, density of the petals and color seemed to bring the best of the various paniculatas into one plant. I the coming years i'll find out how it performs in the garden.

'Praecox' is not as popular as PG for a reason. It have all properties of PG, but blooms at the same time as H.macrophilla and therefore you'll have a void in bloom in August/September, when most of the paniculatas blooms. If you are interested in an early bloomer there is a relatively new cultivar on a market, Quick Fire which blooms at the same time as 'Praecox', but have an upright habit and its panicles consisting of less sterile and more fertile flowers, having an airy appearance similar to that of Kuyshu or Tardiva. It also have a nice peach-apricot-red Fall foliage depending on a sun exposure. As Pinky Winky concerns. It's also relatively new (4-5 years) cultivar that have an upright habit, full panicles and very good red coloring on aging flowers in Sept-Oct. However, in 2010 in USA will be introduced new cultivar 'Vanille Fraise' (Vanilla Strawberry) which by all accounts should be an improvement of PWinky. I've seen pictures of it from gardens in Russia (introduced there in 2009) and it sure keeps up with the hype. It starts gaining the red color from the bottom of the panicle and and slowly moving up as aging progresses. I'd buy this one instead. They will be available all over the country via HD as a distributor of Proven Winners brand. Here is a link that might be useful:

Looks like sagging from too much water/rain (especially looking at the leaves). Trim the long stems to ~36" in the offseason they will become thicker year after year, to support upper foliage/blooms. Consider "mounding" the bed a little and raising the root ball a few inches if too much water is a potential issue. Here is close cousin Great Star. It's approaching 7' and a little sprawly, blooms bend over the stems after heavy rain. I'm going to trim to about 40" max (the fence is close to 48"). Should make for a fuller branch structure next time around.

Why not just plant more of the same? If you want someting different in appearance but of a similar size, I'd consider H. paniculata 'Little Lime' or H. quercifolia 'Ruby Slippers'.