Crapola my links do not work. So sorry. Please copy and paste! Jo

Thank you, Marie. 20 years ago, our display gardens in our public squares and commons were often unusual, imaginative and always interesting ornamental sweetcorn, parsley, chard was used alongside perilla, grasses and less usual annuals - ie. not petunias, begonias and pansies, because they were grown from seed in excellent glasshouses (unheated) at the back of one of the larger municipal parks. There was a rolling scheme of apprenticeships and meanwhile, at my local college (where I also attended) the gardening courses ranged from running a nursery, municipal horticulture, turf and grounds care, arboriculture, landscape and conservation plus the whole gamut of design, build and maintaining gardens. The RHS licensed courses (I am a master gardener, which took me almost 6 years and is equivalent to a degree)...and was one of half a dozen colleges in the eastern region. Marlorena probably knows what's left of the enormous Wisbech campus, now sold off to developers, while several others simply closed now that funding is so...contingent. Horticulture Weekly, the main trade magazine, regularly features front page tales of huge shortages in the industry (we are generally 'missing' at least 5000 new apprentices every year) while skills, hard won and valuable are no longer extant. Council managers have their eyes on short term gain, rueing the cost of paying for gardeners when casual labour and cheap plants can be sourced for a fraction of the cost...and inevitably, our public gardens are barely worth the candle. Fortunately, all is not lost as a new wave of young gardeners are earning their chops on allotments, parent's gardens, even guerilla gardening or community plots...because, as we all know here, gardening is vital, in the blood, a lifeline to creativity and self-expression, like art and music, it will never be extinguished.

More photos from same shoot - Oct. 30, 2019

You appear to have a hydrangea arborescens (Annabelle, Incrediball, Invincibelle, etc.) whose stems -when young- can flop due to the weight of the blooms, weak stem DNA, windy weather, water in the blooms, etc.... As the stems become older, they will turn more woody and will be able to hold more weight but up to a point. Some varieties like Incrediball and Invincibelle can hold more weight and flop less but, despite the advertising, they not immune to the problem. They too have limits and may flop by the end of the season if the right thunderstorm passes by near the end of the season. Hydrangea arborescens blooms like those start green, turn white and continue through a series of color changes as they get older. I suspect that after they have been white now for a while ( month or more), it is time for the next color change, which usually adds a green tint again. Eventually, the bloom will end brown and remain attached to the stems for quite a long time. You can deadhead spent blooms at any time. see the last section at the bottom of this link titled Deadheading hydrangeas: https://plantaddicts.com/pruning-hydrangeas/ Sometimes the color change goes directly from white to brown if the plant needs more water and does not get it. It can be common in the summer time. Hydrangeas tend to suffer from heat stress and may wilt as a result of temperatures above 85F, very windy conditions, lack of water, too much sunlight, etc. Maintain the soil as evenly moist as you can and with 2-4" of organic mulch (no rocks). There may be indirect sunlight hitting the plant as a result of surfaces in the area too. As the root system becomes older and more capable to absorb more water, this problem may be reduced but it tends to occur during the worst part of the summer. I used to use some wire fencing around my Annabelle Hydrangeas, which also displayed similar issues. I found it was best to add this during the winter as there were no leaves to block the view and I could see the internal stem "structure" of the plant and place the wire closer and in better locations. But fencing is something that can be done at any time of course. I do have a habit nowadays of taking a look at the dormant plant during winter and tweaking the wires due to new stem growth, etc. I like to get dark green colored wire fences that eventually get "swallowed" and hidden by all the leaves. Select a height that seems appropriate. Put it around the plant, very close to the stems and "adjust" the fence closer or further away from the stems. Like when one tightens a belt around the waist. If still flopping, move the fencing closer to the center of the stems, as if tightening the belt around your waist. Repeat until you get a look that is "acceptable" to you. I find that starting this fencing in the middle of the growing season does not look as good as when I start the fencing before leaf out time... but, that is just my opinion. You can also strategically cut a few blooms to help with flopping or somehow protect the blooms from getting wet or from getting too much wind but that usually requires transplanting though. I do not recommend completely pruning stems because they get replaced by new stems. And new stems are weaker. As the stems get older, they become more woody and can handle more weight without a lot of bending. So I prefer to keep older, woodier stems. But there are limits to that, of course; sometimes the stems will bend too much and not straighten (or break) so, I understand..., you may have to prune woody ones at times... In those cases, I get cuttings and start new plants for myself, for someone else or for a garden club sale. With Annabelle, I once planted a second Annabelle close to another Annabelle to see if each one would "help" the other not flop as much. In the center of the "combined" bushes, that helped but, not in the periphery. I have seen some people who used low fences also use a stake and green strings as a support system, tucked in close under the branches so that, as the plant leafs out and grows, the supports are hidden. Their Annabelle was also wedged in between a large rhododendron and a spirea that help prop it up, so the Annabelle looks OK even after several pounding rains and a hailstorm the prior day. Of course, just a string would be the quickest way. Buy a tall enough fence stake, pound it in the ground behind the plant with a sledge hammer or whatever; then do an inner and outer lasso. You can also lasso to a fence or structure if one exists. For sure, a single specimen in an "unsheltered", windy location will probably suffer more flopping. As the stems get older and woodier, this may not continue being a problem for long. They are close to the pool though so it may be necessary to prune in order to keep their size in check.