I had an Endless Summer in NC that bloomed 3X annually. It was about 5X5 sheltered by the house such that it only received morning sun and had no competition from tree roots. The color was garish, sorta turquoise, surely some anomaly due to soil type (I only fed it Rose Tone, every plant in my life gets Rose Tone LOL). I'm going to try a Blushing Bride at this house to get the rebloom without a need for sunglasses. I also had a hedge of five Bluebird lacecaps. They were stunning! The bloom period lasted about a month then the spent blooms persisted and turned interesting shades. The nicest hydrangeas I have yet seen were in coastal Connecticut/Long Island.

Gleidecker, here are some pics of my Splash and Golden Crane just shot this morning. The Splash is rambling among several other hydrangeas in this side garden. The 'splash' on the leaves is quite random and I think that is the charm of this plant. It does have a soft fragrance today and might be more pronounced if the weather was warmer. Splash is not sold often and the tag on this one said it was for the collector! lol It is from a special nursery and grower. The nursery is no longer in business which makes this plant even more precious. The Golden Crane is getting taller and taller and I am going to leave it to see just how tall it can get. The top pink marker on the rebar is 8 feet. Ayesha is one of my favorites and always is noticed by visitors. We call it 'popcorn hydrangea' and people always remember that name.The color is very changeable depending on the soil and two plants - one a clone of the other are just 30 feet apart and one is pink and the other blue. The pink one is right by the heat exchanger on a cement platform. They both get full sun most of the day.

Ayesha is one of the earliest blooming macrophyllas and thus is most susseptible to bud-killing late winter/early spring freezes. Nevertheless, I don't protect it ala Hayseedman, but rather planted it in a sheltered location between two mature hollies and evergreen azalea. Anyway, when serious temperature drop is expected in March-April, I throw blanket over it. I can't say it's a reliable bloomer for me, but most of the years it does blooms (mostly at the the bottom, of course), though due to diebacks it never could reach its full [potential] size of 5' and stays in 3'+ tall by 5' wide range. Another usefull attribute of Ayesha is that foliage stays clean and SHINY the whole season.

This year my Ayesha really produced a good show and now blooming in full force with something like 10 to 12 very deep blue flowerheads on it :-) The best score it ever had! Surely last warm winter helped, but I think the new position I put it in in 2006 is a main contributor to the success. Based on last two years performance of my Ayesha, Nachtigale, Teller's Blue and Villosa aspera (all of which are not RELIABLY bud hardy in z6 and were relocated in 2006) I'm willing to go on a limb and make a statement that for the tender/temperamental/marginal hydrangeas the best location in our climate would be the West or NW exposure with maximum protection from the drying winds from any direction. In particular, Ayesha and Nachtigale are planted the way that they got only 1 hour of direct sun from the West all year around, in a summer and in a winter, but they are in a dappled sun most of the day in a summer while in a winter they are mostly in a shade untill late day sun hits them. They have zero exposure to the winds there. Those two are latest hydrangeas in my garden to wake up in a spring. Teller and Villosa are planted in corners where they protected from the E and S by mature hemlocks, but open to the sun from about 3pm till sunset all year around. Villosa protected from all winds while Teller is somewhat exposed to the NW winds and do not bloom to its full potential, but it blooms fairly well nevertheless. The whole idea behind the western exposure vs conventional eastern one is that not an absolute winter minimal temperature (most of macrophyllas have buds hardiness to 0F) kills flower buds in our climate, but wild fluctuations of temps in early spring do. Hydrangeas buds that will receive only minimal amount of sun and only at the end of the day in early spring will NOT start swelling untill early Aprill thus they will be less succeptible to freeze-thaw cycles we experiencing in February-March. Being planted in such positions for the last two years all of my above mentioned 'tenders' show significant improvement in numbers of flowerheads, but their prime bloom time switched from early-mid July to late July-August. Basicaly, they are 2 to 3 weeks later than their E-exposed counterparts which I consider as a benefit because it prolongs my macrophyllas blue display right into white display of paniculatas. :-) As to western exposure in a summer, I could make a bet that all macs could handle at least 2 hours of direct sun in New England, be it southern or western exposure. We are not in Georgia or Texas after all. :-) Good luck.