It's strange, but I have every shrub you are referring to, so I hope my experience with these shrubs is helpful. I have a PeeGee Hydrangea tree, it's about 5 years old, and it is gorgeous. However, because the blooms are so full and heavy, after getting rained on, most of the flowers will droop down. There are ways to prune the tree so that the branches get stronger, which I have been doing, but I am not seeing much improvement. For more information you should look at the Hydrangea forum. I also have 2 other types of hydrangea trees: a Pink Diamond (also has beautiful and large blooms, but they are less dense, so they are lighter and they do not droop after rain, and the white blooms turn a pretty pink as they age), and a Limelight hydrangea (these are more similar to PeeGees than the Pink Diamond, but they seem to be less prone to drooping.) My PeeGee and my Pink Diamond are on the north side of my house (zone 5, Michigan), and they do very well there. I wonder if your southern exposure will be too much sun for them. My Limelight is on the south side of my house and it is doing well there. And I've read that Limelights do well in part to full sun. I've seen snowball viburnum standards, and I think they are gorgeous! I know they do well in full sun because I have a bush in full sun and it's growing nicely. I also have a Merril magnolia (which I think is similar to Stella) on the south side of my house. It produces fragrant white, daisy-like blooms in early spring. It is not a fast grower, and it seems like it would be easy to keep it pruned to the size you want. However, this shrub, like other magnolias only stands out in the landscape in early spring, after that, it is kind of boring. So, I think if you want something eye-catching, for a long period of time, the best choice for you would be a Limelight hydrangea tree. The flowers last from early summer through fall, they don't tend to droop, they are easy to prune, they like full sun, and the flowers start out a beautiful greenish-white, then they turn all green. You may want to look at the Hydrangea forum, it includes alot of information about the various types of hydrangeas.

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?

Have you considered a oakleaf hydrangea? I have 6 of them and they do well here in the Norman area. Some get a couple hours morning sun, some get filtered sun for a few hours mid-day and one only gets bright shade. Each of them have great flowering and are beautiful shrubs. They have great fall coloring as well. These are panicle blooms rather than the big snowballs. I do have one that is in sun for several hours in the afternoon (due to losing a shade tree in the ice storm) and it is very unhappy. I hope it holds on until the shade tree rebounds. With that said, I do have 2 Endless Summer Hydrangeas. I put them in large pots temporarily as I had no idea where to place them. Now one of them is in the ground. They have been getting sun from about 9:00-2:00 and have done well. The one I put in the ground doesn't get as much sun and isn't blooming as well as the other. The nice thing about the ES hydrangeas is they bloom all summer rather than a blast early. They come in several colors. I have Bride (something) and it the flowers are white with a hint of pink as they age. With the clay I have here (which has been amended endlessly for years) I always raise my shrubs. I just dig the hole about half to 2\3 of the height of the pot and then with good soil I just build up the area to the top of the root ball and then use rocks or bricks to hold the soil in place. For a large Oakleaf the rock is about 2 feet out from the trunk. I have added a bunch of info here as I am happy to get to answer something for a change. I lurk and learn here mostly. lol Try this site for info on the different types of hydrangeas. Here is a link that might be useful: All about hydrangeas

Welcome to the New England forum. What a lovely yard you have! I will start by saying that I don't grow this variety of Hydrangea paniculata, though I do have 3 other selections (White Diamond, Pinky Winky, and Quickfire.) I also have put some thought and planning into screening certain views in my garden, so hopefully I can contribute something useful. IME new plants take a bit of time after initial planting to get to their ultimate shape. New plantings are putting much of their growth energy into establishing roots their first growing season. Your plants look like they are also blooming well, and IME H. paniculata varieties establish quicker than many other woody plants, so you will probably see additional vigorous top growth this coming season and thereafter. I'd wait until after the third season to decide whether they will provide the screening that you want. There is a PeeGee down the road from me that is out in the open on all sides like yours, and I will take a look at it next time I go by to see how close to the ground it wants to grow. A couple of comments about your inspiration photo (IP) vs. your situation: How sure are you that the IP is actually PeeGee? There are a bunch of different varieties of H. paniculata with somewhat different overall size; branch stiffness; blossom color, shape, and timing; and each has a slightly different look. Your photo is a bit too fuzzy to my eye to be sure which it is. Your planting situation (open on all sides) is a bit different than the IP, which is backed by other plants. This has two potential effects on the H. paniculatas in the IP which could give them a different appearance than yours (but might not given a few years of growth.) First, this type of Hydrangea prefers a lot of light and the IP's backing of taller plants may be causing the hydrangeas to reach forward and weep a bit in its effort to get more light. Second, since there is more than one layer of plants, any gaps are covered up by the plants in the background. So, what can you do? You can be patient and see how they fill in once they really get growing. You may find that given a couple of years that they do what you want without any other planting since they naturally have an arching branch form. H. paniculata responds well to hard pruning once established, and you could cut them back to below where they are currently sending out leafy branches to get them to branch out lower. This would leave you without screening for a bit when you did this, however, though they will grow back quickly (a couple of months). Or you can do what I do when I want really dense screening; I plant 2-3 layers of plants so that any gaps are filled by other plants. So, you could plant some mid-sized perennials or lower shrubs to fill in the lower gaps of your PeeGees. To make specific suggestions that would be successful we'd need more information such as whether you are willing to plant on this side of the split rail fence and how much room there is on the other side of the PeeGees before the pool deck seating area, amount of sun, and compass direction of the view from the photographer to the pool. However, I've seen photos of Hydrangea arborescens Annabelle in front of H. paniculata, and there are a number of other possible plants that might work here to provide another layer to fill in gaps if they remain. Here are a few blog posts from a Detroit area designer, Deborah Silver, that may give you some ideas. (Her favorite Hydrangea, Limelight, is another H. paniculata, so much of what she says about them would apply to your PeeGees.) Designing with Hydrangeas and here are photos of Annabelle with Limelight (fourth and fifth photos): Hydrangeas and some more photos of the same garden. You can see how having more than one kind of plant (in this case two kinds of Hydrangea) and more than one row can make for a dense planting, since I think this is just a year old. The H. paniculatas will get much taller while Annabelle will top out at 4'. These two both have info on pruning H. paniculatas Let's Talk Pruning A Second Look at Limelight Despite what she says about pruning H. paniculatas, I never prune my H. paniculatas. Here is my 6 year old Pinky Winky which has never seen pruners other than to remove the spent blossoms on the branch tips from the previous year each spring, and it is completely full all the way down to the ground. It's about 8' tall. I think that PeeGees tend to be a bit more fountain-shaped than either Limelight or Pinky Winky.