jclay your hydrangeas are beautiful! I imagine you are both right, I need to use some compost. Luis, I had another hydrangea that someone gave me as a gift. It was pink, I planted it and it took 10 years for that one to bloom again. Now it's growing slowly but has lots of blooms. So perhaps my yard needs a major work-over! I am in zone 7a. Last winter had a couple of 20 degree days but not that many, and I don't remember any hard frosts in the spring. I don't believe deer are eating the blooms, the plant really looks great, other than no blooms, and I have never seen any buds. This shrub gets full sun from about 8am to 4 pm. I haven't tested my soil, but I am pretty sure I added absolutely nothing when I planted it. As a matter of fact, a few years after planting, I had to add more top soil because the roots were starting to show. That was about 6 years ago. I live in northern virginia, so I believe our soil is fairly acidic. Thanks so much for your help! Can anyone tell me how to add a pic to my post?

I would get one of those soil kits that tests for too much nitrogen and determine if somehow you are accumulating too much fertilizer where that non-bloomer is located. Sometimes lawn fertilizer, combined with the hydrangea's fertilizer combine and become too much so you get no blooms. As we get into Spring 2012, I would check if the shrubs are developing any flower buds or if the flower buds are developed and then are being eaten. So observe if pests like to congregate there... pests like deer, squirrels, etc congregate. They could be eating all of your flower buds. However, I would expect them to also munch on the other two NB. So I am not sure if this is THE cause but it is worth checking anyways. If you are not getting any flower buds then you may have an environmental problem. It is too cold and the buds dry out, for example. Or it is too dry during the Fall and-or Winter and the plant aborts the flower buds. NB should be hardy on your zone 6 so I would check if this one gets less water.... say because the sprinkler waters the other two fine but does not reach well enough to this one NB. Dense shade can be a problem too but if all three were in dense shade, I would expect them all to be affected. Just wondering, have you ever had a formal soil test done?

Susan, If you are positive that you are not overfeeding them with a high-nitrogen fertilizer that encourages foliar growth at the expense of flowers, then I can think of two possibilities: 1) In zone 7 and colder zones, variegated hydrangeas often do not bloom and the reason why is our often erratic weather. (Big surprise there.) Variegated hydrangeas tend to start forming their flower buds too early--during warm spells during what is, essentially, still winter here. Then, colder weather returns, and the tiny buds freeze off, generally before you ever even noticed buds had formed, and thus ends your plants' chances for blooming that year. In zone 8 and warmer, where the weather is less erratic and late cold spells are more rare, variegated hydrangeas tend to bloom somewhat more consistently. That's my best guess for why they aren't blooming. Most people in zones 7 and colder who plant variegated hydrangea plant it primarily for the lovely foliage and, in the few years they get blooms, consider the flowers a bonus. 2) The other possibility is that you are pruning them at the wrong time--after buds have begun to form (even if you can't see them yet), and are cutting off the potential buds/flowers. Knowing our erratic climate like I do, I feel like #1 is the most likely possibility. It will be interesting to see what the experts at the Hydrangea Forum say. Dawn

Winter kill. I live just north of Concord, NH, and we got down well below zero this past winter with no snowfall, and down below -20 after there was a fair amount of snow on the ground. The previous winter was only a bit less harsh and so many plants were damaged by cold. You are even farther north than I am and so experienced the same type of cold. This type of Hydrangea, H. macrophylla, has older types that only bloom in spring on old wood, and those wouldn't bloom at all since all of last year's stems were killed off by the extreme cold. There are also some newer types that bloom on old branches from previous years as well as on new growth from stems that are growing for the first time this year, but they will be slow to bloom since they are starting from the ground. Usually the old wood and its buds are only hardy to - 10 to -15, so in milder winters it survives, while in really harsh winters such as the last two, these shrubs have to start with all new wood since the old wood has been killed to the ground. You can either live with having many blooms only some years, or you can plant either Hydrangea arborescens varieties like Annabelle (white) or Invincibelle Spirit (pink), or Hydrangea paniculata varieties such as Limelight, Little Lime, Quickfire, Little QF, Bobo, Pinky Winky, Vanilla Strawberry, etc. All these start in some shade of pale green to white and slowly change over the course of several months to various shades of pink.