Gardening is subject to the vagaries of fashion like so many aspects of our lives.
We are told what is in and what is so démodé that no one could possibly want to plant it in their garden. But as with clothes, we can have our own style and aesthetic and ignore the garden snobs.
We all have our own prejudices – Monty Don, famously, is not a fan of tuberous begonias. Some people inexplicably find yellow flowers offensive. I think yellow – in all its extraordinary range – is a wonderful colour in the garden but rarely with pink (there are exceptions).
I love hydrangeas. When I state this long held attraction I can be looked at with pity, scorn, dismay or incomprehension. “Granny flowers” is a frequent disparagement. I shrug. I have been a granny for over two decades now but my love for hydrangeas stems from my childhood.
Sarah Beattie
I did share this obsession with my grandmother and our quest for truly blue mopheads. We tried everything – brillo pads, alum, tea leaves, coffee grounds, ericaceous compost – but her magnificent seaside hydrangeas stayed resolutely pink (with a touch of mauve occasionally).
When she died at 97, I had a wreath of blue hydrangea made for her coffin.
She would be thrilled to know that last year I finally had a second year of blue on one of my hydrangeas!
It has been a long road to get here.
Hydrangeas are sensitive to the acidity in the soil. In France you’ll find intensely blue hydrangeas in areas of Normandy, Brittany and mountainous regions such as the Alps and the Pyrenees. As their name suggests, hydrangeas love water but not too much. They don’t want to stand in it but they do like a rich, moist soil.
And most hydrangeas don’t like baking in hot sun. My new neighbour has been advised by an architect to avoid putting gutters on his traditional mud built farmhouse as the walls would dry out too much but he was told to plant hydrangeas on the North side to prevent damp.
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This was in direct contradiction to the conservation team who demanded our commune remove the huge deep red hydrangeas against the church wall.
A North facing wall is a good position for hydrangeas here in the South West.
Most of mine – and I have 25 or so at the last count – are in a bed which was swamped with honeysuckle. It then had another decade being where all the grass cuttings were dumped. Now it is the richest, most friable soil in the garden.
Favourite hydrangea varieties
My long time favourite is Hydrangea aspera Sargentiana. A survivor of the garden wall collapse, it has huge velvety leaves, papery bark and the flower heads are more delicate and subtle than mopheads – soft mauvey-pink tiny flowers with white sterile florets. Newcomer Hydrangea Runaway Bride was RHS Chelsea Plant of The Year 2018. It flowers all along its stems and so is covered in blooms. It is more compact than most hydrangeas and has much smaller leaves. As the flowers age they have a tendency to soften from pure white to pinkish.
I have a large collection of Hydrangea paniculatas. Paniculatas have elongated flower heads and much smaller individual florets.
Vanille Fraise hydrangeaSarah Beattie
The first one, the original Limelight, was inherited from an aunt. The flower heads are a fresh green colour which look so beautiful against the soft pink of a Gertrude Jekyll rose or Phlox carolina Bill Baker. My cousin gave me Vanille Fraise which is widely available in France – the flower heads start out white and then are suffused with a strawberry colour, like a blush rising.
A friend gave me H. arborescens Annabelle after we had admired its profusion at Les Jardins de Coursiana at La Romieu, in Gers. There are now Super Annabelles and Pink Annabelles, developed to have stronger stems to support the enormous, tiny-flowered heads. It is the easiest hydrangea to propagate as it suckers under the soil – simply scrape away the earth at the base and dig up a section of root with a shoot on it. Pot it up in compost and water well.
When the flower heads first appear, they are green and look like an immature viburnum. As they age they turn white and become huge but they are much more delicate in structure to a traditional mophead.
Other hydrangeas are easily grown from softwood cuttings – using sharp secateurs, cut just below a leaf-joint on a non-flowering, pencil thick stem, allowing about 10cm length. Remove all but the top pair of leaves. Push the cutting into a pot of damp compost. Place in the shade and water regularly.
Supermarkets often sell beautiful hydrangeas for €1 when then they look like they are dead. Most will be revived by soaking in water overnight.
Oakleaf hydrangeaSarah Beattie
Hydrangeas can give you wonderful leaf colour – H. macrophylla sanguinea has rich dark red colour on its foliage and the mopheads can go from deep pink to burgundy. The oakleaf hydrangea H. quercifolia has large well-spaced creamy paniculata flower heads and its huge leaves, in autumn, become a range of vivid reds.
If you would like bark colours, there is the H. nigra /Black Steel series with their dramatic tall dark stems. I am not a fan of the garish H. Glam Rock new colour combinations nor those with variegated leaves like H. Goldrush but that’s okay – if you are, I won’t judge.
We can all just enjoy the ones we love and leave the hydrangea haters behind.