We have a climbing hydrangea growing up the side of our house (eastern exposure). It was already a huge established plant when we moved in ... it does not need a trellis, it grabs onto the brick and climbs by itself. We hack it back by half every Spring, and it will still be at the eaves by the end of the summer. IF you're going to grow it on the house, you have careful. Ianna raised many valid points about the potential downfalls. Ours is too large to move now, and I wouldn't want to kill it ... but eventually I may try to move it just because of all the problems it can cause. I would suspect a CH is too large, vigorous and heavy for a trellis or wooden fence. Growing up a tree might be nice. Certainly no hardiness issues with this one either. When it is in full bloom, it looks quite spectacular ... you just need to find the right spot for it. Here is a link that might be useful: Mad Dogs and Englishmen

I have a climbing hydrangea also. I have had it for about five years. I have it planted about 8 feet away from the foundation of a neighbors garage. It is facing west. It is ALWAYS in the sun for the most part except for a small portion of the morning until it clears the building. It has been blooming for about two years or so heavily. The heat nor sun does not seam to bother it. The soil is not even nice soil there..it still thrives....I have nothing but good to say about it....worry free..I am in zone five.

Yes, you can guide your vine toward the spruce tree and it will eventually begin to climb it. As you know, this vine is a fairly slow grower so it won't be leaping onto the tree. I had one of these vines for many years when I gardened in SW Ohio.

Thanks for the information gardengal. It seems like, based on yours and others' experience, that this plant is very vigorous once established but not aggressive. Elizabeth, your plants sound absolutely lovely! How interesting that the leaves are significantly different sizes based on the sun exposure. Thanks for chiming in with your experience. Yesterday, my husband and I took down a medium size tree that the original homeowner had planted in a bad spot. The top was leaning over trying to get sunlight and had a lot of dieback. The trunk was quite straight and split into two trunks at about 6' high. After we cut off the upper branches, my husband was suddenly inspired to make a lean-to type structure for the hydrangea and notched out the V made by the trunk split and took the thickest of the two upper trunks and angled it in into the V. The trunks are a good 8" in diameter so they will last a long while before rotting. We'll put in some smaller branches for the hydrangea to establish itself on and hopefully, since this one will be in more sun, it will grow onto itself like Elizabeth's. The structure is not that big, but there is a large tree just behind it (which is why the other tree was struggling so much). So if/when the hydrangea engulfs the lean-to, hopefully we can train it along the ground and up the tree. We'll see how it goes. I will try to post a picture. We will put the other one on the chain link dog pen using the biggest branches from the tree as support to give it something to climb. This one will be in a lot of shade. I have a book by the Royal Horticultural Society on pruning and training and it says that Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris does very well with a hard pruning. Of course, we'd loose blooms for a while but its good to know that this plant can handle it if need be.