Just wanted to mention that I DID get a lot of bloom on my two well-established Endless Summers last season. Most of the bloom was early, as Calliope said, followed by a small amount of later bloom sprinkled throughout the remaining season with some still opening late in fall. This year I got only a small amount of bloom along the brick wall side of the shrubs (as I previously posted) and NO additional bloom yet as of late August. A few branch stems do have some tiny buds. Last year I had buds in all stages of development at this time of year plus fresh opening flowers. So ES has not been a total bust for me, as macrophyllas do not generally bloom at all here (unless heavily protected or you are just plain very lucky). In an earlier home closer into the metro area I did inherit an unknown Hydrangea macrophylla that did occasionally (every 3 years or so) put out a handful of blooms for me. My ESs are on the east side of my house along the brick wall, but received no other protection and have never been fertilized, except one year when I used Aluminum sulfate (if that counts) to turn them blue. Worked pretty well.

That's wonderful, encouraging news about your Endless Summer. I just purchased one. Now I have to decide when and where to transplant it. Where is your Endless Summer planted? AM & PM; sun or partial shade or all shade? I'm learning from the experienced members of this group. My two lace caps finally have buds after years of none. A neighbor kindly trimmed more lower branches of a pine tree, resulting with more morning sun, before becoming partial shade.

I have had the same luck with Endless Summer Hydrangea as Jackz41!! Endless Summer is rated as Zone 4. In northern Wisconsin, I saw that many people did not have good luck with Endless Summer blooming before mid-July up here, this could be a problem elsewhere in the country too. I have over 65 roses so I took a wintering trick from my roses to get Endless Summer to bloom early! I bend the plants completly over and hold them down with bricks or larger rocks, in early November after a hard freeze(this can be hard as the shrubs get bigger, but you can do it carefully) I then cover them lightly with oak leaves and let snow fall on them! As we get lots of snow up here it has worked well for winter protection so the tips do not freeze! I have not had any mold problems with this trick! I have been growing Endless Summer since they first came out on the market, I have seven of them some just planted 1.5 ago. The older plants are around 3.5-4'high-4' wide. They get 4-5 hours of direct sunlight and filtered for several more hours, I also fetilize them with the same fertilizer I use for roses in lesser amounts. They start blooming in the middle of June with lots of blooms in all colors depending on your soil. I just add nail filings to make some of them more blue and leave the rest of the plants alone so I get colors from blue to lavender, purple and pink! Later in summer the mature blooms turn more green, then in fall they take on a burgandy hue with the green. They are really pretty, hardy and long blooming and great cut flowers when dryed as they mature in the Fall. Along with my pee-gee and several annabelle's (my hydrangea work horse) I love my Endless summer hydrangea's just as much as my roses!!

I'm not in Chicago, but my Endless Summers bloomed WAY later than normal because they had to completely start over again after the April freeze. And they didn't start growing again immediately. It was like they were in shock or something for awhile before they could get going again. I had started wondering if they were dead. They do get 4 1/2 hours AM sun, which probably enabled them to go ahead and form blooms this year. However, the blooms were not nearly as numerous or as large as they were in past years. I think they'll probably be back to normal next year, barring an April freeze! Deanna