i dont understand the problem??? are you suggesting.. that you have so few plant choices that your life can not go on.. if you dont keep/get this plant in your yard??? if it bothers you.. GET RID OF IT ... or dont buy it otherwise... i found out that if i fed my kids well enough .. they didnt really need to graze the garden ... lol .. and the first thing they learned when they could talk.. was not to put anything in the garden in their mouth ... unless daddy gave it to them ... i wouldnt care if a bunny was to stupid to not know better [which i doubt] .. same with the dog .... as it should be trained enough to stay out of your garden ... as to the bees... how would this thing go to seed.. w/o a pollinator ... etc ... me thinks you doth protest to much.. frankly.. everything in your garden is toxic.. one way or another... but if you cant live with the risk.. all the power to ya.. but dont tell me you cant live w/o it ... is there a psyche forum .. lol .. this isnt about the plant.. as much as you worrying about it ... and you will NEVER enjoy this plant.. if you get it .... so why bother.... ken ps: know why monarch butterflies are so wildly colored??? because they are highly poisonous to birds.. and the color keeps the birds away ... mother nature has a way of taking care of these things ... but she can do nothing about you 'worrying' about it all ...

It look very good, indeed and could be left as is, but my 'always could be better' mind telling me that, -curve from the 'flowers portion' of the bed to peninsula should be softened and be similar to what you have in 'Annabele portion' to peninsula connection. It will still make your SM standing at the tip of the peninsula, but will make the whole bed more uniform and tied together, - the 'flower portion' shouldn't go at the angle straight from the steps, but rather should go out perpendicular to them and then make a soft 90 degree turn exactly as it is done on an opposite side. re: trunk is not idealy vertical. If all previous suggestions was only IMO and simply reflected my own taste and preferences, in this case I don't think you have another choice as to replant it correctly AND stake it for at least 1 full year (preferably for two winters). Your site is sloping down and some soil erosion will happen no matter what in a next one-two years. You don't want to deal with a leaning back [and much larger] tree in such conditions.

I'm relatively new to hydrangeas, too. I've found that once they become established, you don't have to water quite as much. I have a smallish one competing with tree roots that I have to water every other day. If only it would rain!

The first sentence of that site says it all. Semi-arid, few natural trees, IRRIGATION NECESSARY. So lets fight nature and do something that will require great expense and use a finite, precious resource, generally unavailable locally, for the next, oh 500 years or so. Because that's what scientists say is likely, a mega drought in the SW. It has happened in the past, probably several times, and will happen again, we may be seeing the beginnings of it now. Sometimes I wonder if 'Homo' is using the 'sapiens' of his namesake. Living in a "green state", what would I do for my well established trees, and I have a small forest, in the event of a severe drought? The same as I would do in any other natural event such as a forest fire, hurricane, flood, ice storm, or lava flow: absolutely nothing. Let nature take its course, survival of the fittest. Unless Planet Earth gets sanitized by a neutron star or some such event, trees will survive. Maybe not MY trees, but some trees. Or seeds. Somewhere. Young, newly planted trees are another matter, sometimes. If I am able, and depending on the species, they'll get watered for the first year, second at most, and only enough to keep them alive until the rain returns. In 2007, I lost a lot of newly planted stuff to the Easter freeze, and later pretty much everything else to the scorching heat and drought. Watering was futile, so I didn't even try. It was REAL hard for me to watch. Some of the large trees in the area still bear the scars of that double whammy. That year marked a turning point for me, I stopped actively planting my place.