Hi, I just ordered my mom some daylilies and because they won't ship until the fall I was given the choice of 2 free plants (Autumn Ridge Nursery). I read the list to her and she chose blue hydrangeas. So I just did some poking around on the web and it said that to keep them blue you need to keep the soil acid. Sorry, I don't know how to make a link so I just copied and pasted: "If you're growing Hydrangea Marcrophylla (French Hydrangea) you can turn it from pink to blue by lowering the pH level of your soil. The color is determined by the amount of aluminum available to the plant. Add 3 to 4 tablespoons of aluminum sulfate to a gallon of water. Apply it 2 times, 2 weeks apart, for 4 to 6 months prior to blooming. You can also add coffee grounds, eggshells or ground-up citrus peel to the soil. You're shooting for a pH of 5-6. On a similar note, blue hydrangeas can be changed to pink by adding 3-8 cups (depending on the size of the plant) of dolomic lime around the base of the hydrangea. Do this 2 or 3 times between the blooming seasons. As an alternative, you can also try a bit of superphosphate around the base of the plant. Shoot for a pH of 6.8-7.2. The color change doesn't happen overnight so be patient. It can take as long as a year or two to see the results. The white varieties of hydrangeas (such as PeeGee, Silver Leaf, Hills of Snow, etc.) cannot be changed. They remain while regardless of tampering with the pH of the soil." Hope this helps. I'm going to print it out and send it to my mom when they ship her plants in the fall. Kimberly

Jim, yes, we are in CT are blessed with mostly acidic soils and therefore our hydrangeas will be on a blue side. By adding lime you may temporarily change pH of the soil, but you have to do it for at least two season to make them bloom pink and you'll have to keep ammending planting area forever to keep it that way. Since you are talking about black-stemmed hydrangeas (Nigra?) you may not like the end result (I don't), but intermediate purple stage when it will transition from blue to pink is something that would make everyone ah! and oh! BTW, you could still continue your process in a winter. Just throw ashes from the fireplace under the shrub and they'll be absorbed by the soil during our wet winters. Good luck.

I agree with Dingo about sun exposure. H. arborescens doesn't much like full or western sun, though it wants some sun to bloom really well, so it should be fine in the exposure you described above. H. paniculata in my garden is fine in full day sun, though farther south it benefits from some shade, but with the bright shade involved here, it still should bloom and grow well with morning sun. I have a friend with Bobos in part shade, part sun and they look happy. One difference between the two is that H. arborscens suckers some, so for my Annabelle, I have to remove suckers once or twice a year (ususally fall and then in spring for the ones I missed) if I don't want it to overtake the surrounding shrubs. I don't know if all H. arborescens are quite as vigorous as Annabelle. H. paniculata doesn't sucker so in my garden is less work. I had an injured knee that made much garden work difficult to impossible for about three years, and here's my Annabelle, unchecked for all that time, but if kept maintained it is a lovely plant.(windowsill sits at 4' to give you height.) I would look at the summer color and fall color of various H. paniculatas and H. arborescens in your size range along with the shape and density of the flower heads and how upright the branches are. Only you can decide which appeals to you the most. They should all bloom well for you.

Try adding some lime prior to leaf out time to see if the shrub gets some pinks or purples. Maybe add it at random places too to see if it helps mix the various colors throughout all the blooms. I would be tempted to try adding only at 12pm, 4pm and 8pm. I do not know. Whatever makes it display those nice color mixes. I have one pink lacecap that I add aluminum sulfate everywhere in order to go from pink to blue but so far, I can only get it to "go" to purple-ish. I had to add more a/s than recommended by the label because, as springwood commented, it was not enough, ie, it was not changing the pink as much as I wanted/needed. But I may be proceeding too carefully though (trying not to burn the roots). ;o) Nice picture, Lydia. The rose reminds of a Lady Hillingdon that I have in the back of the house although I would prefer the Lady Banks Yellow Rose if LBY wasn't a once a year bloomer and if LBY did not grow into such a monster.