I bought one about 4 weeks ago from Lowes at Edgewood. But I haven't seen any there since. You could try asking there though, since they have had some in.

I bought several hydrangeas including a variegated one over the winter, and the variegated is growing the slowest of all. Wonder what it is about them.

Your new front bed looks great! I have 3 small daisy gardenias on my new patio bed, they are really tiny but have just put out a few flowers each, I'm so pleased!

What is the purplish shrub at the back of the left-hand bed (in front of white porch railing)? It looks a bit loropetalum-like, but I know you prefer planting natives so I wonder if thats a super purple native that I need to add to my shopping list?

I stopped at a HD on L'ville Hwy(Decatur)a few weeks ago to pick up a few bags of mulch and as usual, had to check out their Hydrangeas. I had been searching for 'Queen of Pearls' and couldn't find them all of last year. Luckily, they had just arrived and there were 6 in stock(one-gal only), so I bought the best and largest two!
Did not see any LIR's, of any size. Probably understandable, since they did not sell very well last year.
Talked to a relative this AM, who had been to the same store today and she said they were pulling Hydrangeas off the tables and loading them for return to the grower and there were no LIR. At that HD, there are no store employees in the garden shop to answer questions. It is strictly cash & carry.
Good Luck!
Rb

mayland - i knew i wasn't going crazy, Lowes at Edgewood is the one i was talking about, i asked the 'manager' for that area that was doing inventory at the time and he'd said they hadn't gotten them in yet this year. Thanks for confirming that my memory isn't as senior as i'd thought. i guess Lowes' gardening folks just don't know their stuff - this is why i prefer to shop @ Village Hardware; at least when i go to VH, the people i've spoken with generally know what they're talking about (moreso than a lot of our local plant shops, even). alas, i'm not sure what the deal is with the variegated hydrangeas. i don't have the patiences to sit and wait; my other hydrangeas are growing (easily) 5x faster, so the variegated will get moved to a place that isn't so dependent upon a fast grower.

razorback - i talked to Matt @ my local Home Depot (on Ponce De Leon across from City Hall East) and he'd said something about how they had to send back several racks full of hydrangeas at the end of the season last year, and that the LIRs were amongst the ones that went with. in all seriousness, every place we stopped yesterday had less than a dozen hydrangeas, period. HD had ~6-8, Lowes had ~12, VH had ~6.

welp, if anyone knows a local metro area place to source them, i'd love to find some!

Why do they not sell very well? I can't imagine why as I just love them! I thought hydrangeas typically grow well down here (variegated excepted), or am I mistaken? The ones at the Botanical Gardens are flowering and very beautiful.

I've been making a whole bed of hydrangeas outside our bedroom window. My local Ace (Scott Blvd) had lots reduced over the winter (maybe they too had not sold many), so i bought 5 or 6. They're just starting to flower now. I will need to add some evergreens, but I can't imagine why they don't sell well :)

Satellitehead, I'll keep my eye out for some, I usually need a sanity-restoring visit to a garden center every few days so I'll shout if I see one.

sounds good! i don't think that they didn't necessarily sell well, just after the drought, water restrictions, and heading into winter, the chain stores (from what i gather) returned the plants that didn't sell to the nursery(ies?). i don't necessarily understand the process of how plants work ... and i didn't think that any retailer - even a big-box retailers - held plants at their locations on consignment, but then the guy @ HD told me they'd sent back a couple of racks of hydrangeas, and i saw several employees from Stacys actually @ HD yesterday evening bringing plants in, taking plants away, rearranging displays, etc.

what actually happens on the between grower and retail outlet is still a big question mark for me.

Last year the Home Depot stores near me WAY overstocked LIR hydrangeas. They had dozens and dozens of them. I'm sure they had tons left over, especially with the drought. Perhaps that is why they don't have them much this year - they had a bad experience with them.

well, I went to Toco Hills Pike tonight (i still go there despite my previous post about being frustrated with them, its so close). They did not have it, just to exclude one place for you. They did have a really big selection of hydrangeas though.

Rb, they had a Queen of Pearls (3g i think).

Well, I called another couple of nurseries including Habershams, and managed to find several 3gal there.

Meanwhile, I've been trying to cobble together a landscape album to share which covers the last 3-4 years of changes in our yard, including the msot recent stuff like the absolutely amazing new retention wall that Brad Longanecker (aka 'vroomp' here @ Gardenweb, I highly, highly recommend him!) built for us this past couple of weeks. Found some pictures of my last grass-removal experience from last spring and the end results, thought I would share. I am sure people in my neighborhood probably think I'm completely nuts for happily cutting out a good 60% of the grass in my yard and replacing it with veggie gardens and plants, but ... oh well :)

I'd love to see your landscape album. Thanks for posting these photos, your new flower beds look much nicer than all grass did! Lots of work digging that grass out. We've been weeding/digging out endless mondo grass, its better than going to the gym!

I really like the yellow and pink/purple combination in the last photo. I'm trying to plan planting for lots of large beds at the moment, and color combo is something i find really difficult (and the Landscape Design forum here is scary!).

i'm in the process of uploading a bunch of photos, but probably won't finish for a couple of days. if you want to check out what is already available, here is a link to my gallery. Note that there aren't any comments in place, so some of the stuff may not necessarily be well-labelled :)

I wasn't very diligent about taking photos as we went along, and in 2007 we saw a massive change in the yard....removing, transplanting, heavily enlarging the beds...even up to yesterday when I heavily chopped by our carolina jessamine.

Hope you enjoy :)

I saw several LIR in a new Home Depot in Flowery Branch on Hog Mountain Road. They had several other types of hydrangeas there as well.

I was let down by Habershams, I got there only to find that they had the single 1-gal there, but all of the 3-gal wound up being a diff't variety. So I'm still on the hunt. I had to (shudder) go back to Home Despot over the weekend, and I couldn't help but look - they had none. I didn't make it around to any other local nurseries. Habershams says they will absolutely get a mess of 3-gal this Friday, there was a mixup with the last shipment.

They (Habershams) also had two 1-gal foamflowers and several Lime Rickey Heucheras as well, which were of interest, but ... I wanted to pick all up at the same time.

That's a great gallery, and great captions, you can really follow each step that you've made. I enjoyed reading with my cup of coffee :)

I like how you've enlarged the beds and curved to wrap round to the side bed. And I'm very reassured that you've moved plants as things have started to grow -- I'm finding that as I plant things, I wonder whether they wouldn't look better in a different place, or even a different bed. I'm sure I'll be moving lots around this fall.

I hope you get your Lady-in-Reds. Mine has started to flower -- definitely more like Lady-in-Pink at the moment, they are supposed to redden as they mature.

Thanks for posting your pics!

I just went by the Home Depot on 92 in Roswell. They have fresh 3 gallon LIR hydrangeas for $22.97. Looks like they had about eight of them.

They also had Sambucus 'Black Beauty' (not 'black lace'). But that means that their Proven Winner shipments are coming in, so check your local HD for what they have.

Thank you, Esh. My local HD has Black Beauty as well, I'll keep checking them for Black Lace. I read somewhere (on DG i think) that Black Lace holds its color better in the heat of the South, not sure how true that is but I thought i would heed that advice.

I did pop into my local Ace on my way home today and found a 3-gal Don's Dwarf wax myrtle! I planted and watered heavily tonight so I hope it will be OK. I love Ace.

I saw some Lady in Reds at the Home Depot in Griffin last night. They were a good size and appeared healthy.