1.) Pink Double Delight - Always blooms more and longer than the others. It's superior to all of them I've grown. It can grow in full sun or part sun. 2.) Razzmatazz - This one has been in a wet location for 4 years and always comes back and blooms all summer. 3.) Pallida - It always returns. I do have to spray it with Daconcil each May, but that's a small price to pay for such a beautiful plant. Pretty blooms on very long stems! 4.) Paradoxa - It is a dependable yellow coneflower. It returns each year and looks better each year. It's slow to establish, but once it does...look out. You will have big yellow blooms with such nice, long stems! 5.) After Midnight - As long as it's grown in a location with afternoon shade, this plant will thrive. It doesn't have the distorted petals of other Big Sky Series plants. 6.) Tiki Torch - Big Disappointment so far! The color is nice and doesn't fade, but the plant is not a good perennial. Only 25% of my plants returned after winter. They were all in a bed with excellent drainage. All the other plants returned too! I'm experimenting with it in a shadier location. I will post my results next year! 7.) Sundown - A nightmare to grow! Some years the petals are distorted. It does over-winter here, but what a disappointment. The blooms fade very rapidly to a pastel ugly color. 8.) Twilight - This plant wouldn't grow. It turned solid black and died and never returned. I didn't waste anymore money on it. 9.) Sunrise - A complete disaster! Distorted petals...Blooms fade too quickly! Plant returns smaller than the year before. HATE IT! 10.) Harvest Moon - Another disaster. Nice blooms when they first open, but they fade to an ugly pastel color too. Distorted petals. Poor winter-hardiness. Plants that do return are smaller than the year before. 11.) Merlot - Nice plant. Seems to be a winner. 12.) Coconut Lime - I love this one, but it does return smaller than the previous year. I'm waiting for it to bloom and will post then. 13.) Mac 'N Cheese - A very weak plant. If I were you, I wouldn't purchase this one yet. Wait until next year. This one is not going to impress anyone. 14.) Tomato Soup - A better grower than Mac 'N Cheese, but I think you should wait on this one too. 15.) Pink Poodle - The pictures of this one are staged. This plant has poor branching habit. You'll be lucky if you get one bloom the first year.

My first Hydrangea is now in the ground for more than 25 years. At this point, I keep it for sentimental reasons only. It's gotten so THICK with canes that if I wrap it in my usual cage, I have to get everything so tight in there that I think I may actually be suffocating the plant. I've not had good luck overwintering it in recent years. This past winter I didn't even bother with it. If I were you, I'd consider taking a cutting or digging out a portion of your sentimental one and essentially start over. It would indeed be the same plant, so you could keep your sentiment. But I can understand sentiment. I should get rid of my first Hydrangea, but I'm not. For a long time I would cut back the old canes completely to the ground in the Fall. I'd only leave canes that had shot up from low points on the canes or from the crown. They would have grown all summer and would end up giving me great flowering the next year. I'd have very long stemmed flowers, too, that I had cut. The big problem with this technique is that you end up with weaker stems than you would otherwise and next summer they'd be weighted down to the ground with their flowers. I've found that, for my zone, I can usually prune as hard as I want up until about Fourth of July, just to be easy to remember, and not hurt the flowering potential for next year. After that, the buds start setting for next year and you start running into that problem. (But then I've cut some "nikkos" back to the crown in the Fall and on some I'd get great flowering and on some I'd get none. Do I really understand this? NO.) So, here is another method for you to consider to keep it smaller, at least in height. Another thing I've experimented with is to prune all the wimpy growth completely out and just end up with a few stout canes over time. This was interesting, but you end up with an artifical looking Hydrangea and the few stout canes start looking rather strange. But with this technique, more or less, you could develop a plant that wasn't so crowded. I don't know though. I wish I could help you more. I'd like an answer to the question you have, too! Hay

Rainbow, I start with 10-52-10 around the first to middle of June. If I remember to do it I fertilize about every two weeks until the first of November or until hard freeze. This may not work and will not be needed if you have rich soil. The soil in NE Mississippi on the hills is not rich at all. If there is not plenty of rainfall I also water as needed. I plant all my rebloomers close enough to the house that I can reach them with the water hose. I have three(Anxious, Immortality and Brother Carl) that have been blooming since June and the regular fall bloomers started late August. Except for about two weeks after the spring bloom I have had at least one iris in bloom since early March. If I get a few really late spring bloomers I think I can fill that gap. Lee Mincy

July 14, 2016, z4: I live in West Central MN, z4, have had an Endless Summer, Twist & Shout, planted on East corner of house since summer of 2011 (5 yrs at time of this writing). It gets full sun in morning, a little dappled sun in afternoon for a very short time, rich soil, moist conditions, landscape fabric covered with wood mulch, no turf or other nearby vegetation to compete with. This should be perfect Hydrangea conditions, and while this plant has been robust and healthy from the very beginning, it does NOT get anywhere near its advertised size. (Label that came on my plant says 4 to 5 ft tall and wide.) It dies back completely to the ground every winter so growth starts all over, from ground level, every spring, rather late in the spring, and reaches its maximum size of 2 ft tall X 3 ft wide in mid July. This also means it blooms only on new growth. Though it's advertised as blooming on both new and old growth, there is no old growth that survives the winter for blooms to grow on. I do not cut it back in the fall....don't touch it at all.....and leave the old growth until the following season. In the spring, I clean up the dead and fallen leaves from the year before but leave the old stems standing. (I started leaving the previous year's dead stems through the following spring beginning from the time I planted it, always hoping that, if given enough time, they'd come to life and be that "old growth" that would give the plant that bigger size and more flowers. I've given up that idea, but it's just a habit now. It's become one of those, "This is how I manage this plant because I know it does no harm" , kind of things.) Once the new growth is nearing the height of the previous year's stems, I simply break the old ones off as close to ground level as I can without disturbing new growth, usually ending up to be 3-4 inches above ground level, completely hidden by the new growth. Because they're "dead", the old stems just snap off by hand, very easily, and those few inches that may be left behind have fallen into the soil by the time late fall arrives and the plant once again goes into dormancy, has shed its summer foliage, and everything that was living that summer dies back completely over the coming winter. Over the summer and early fall, it usually has up to 12 blooms at any given time, depending on how much TLC it gets. Blooms range in size from 3" to 7" across (older blooms). Each flower lasts a long time. As far as the color of the flowers, some years they are more on the purple side, some years they are a bit more pinkish. Most years, there's an interesting mix of both colors on each individual flower, often times starting out more on the pink side but changing to purple with a smattering of pink as the blooms mature to full size. I don't know how the plant determines, but it does so on its own since I do NOT amend the soil with anything to change the PH level or influence the bloom color. All I do as far as feeding is give it a drink of water soluble "Bloom Booster" fertilizer (10-52-10) three or four times during the summer, beginning around July 1 (when the plant is nearing its full size and focusing most of its energy into putting on new blooms), and ending the end of August, at the latest. I tried giving it a balanced fertilizer beginning earlier in the season and found that it there was lots of green but sparse on flowers and could get rather leggy. This feeding routine seems to give the best results, in my situation, anyway. I'm very fortunate to live in an area of glacier-rich black soil (black gold!) where pretty much EVERYTHING I've ever planted in my 40 yrs of gardening/landscaping grows much larger and faster than what's stated on the labels. I was expecting the same with this Hydrangea, that its mature size would be greater than its label indicated, so I gave it plenty of room, which is doesn't come close to filling. I've decided to transplant it either this fall or next spring (depending on what I find on the internet for info on how it will stand up to fall transplanting in my zone, which I've not yet found). I think I'll put a Black Lace Elderberry bush in the vacated spot and move the Twist&Shout Hydrangea further down the east side of the house, next to a large bunch of established White Phlox just about to break into beautiful full bloom this time of year. That's my only disappointment with this Hydrangea, its ultimate size. According to my experience, it will never reach the size stated on the label in zone 4, where it dies back to the ground every winter and comes back from ground level every spring. An attractive and, so far, hardy zone 4 plant, to be sure, but not nearly as large as some other varieties in the Hydrangea family, and the larger size is what I was wanting when I bought the Twist and Shout.