Category: Garden, Growing Flowers

Planting flowering annuals and perennials in the landscape. New posts are Florida gardening with the hydrangeas and some others being from the north.

I’m Learning How to Grow Lilacs

white lilac flowers

I look forward to seeing my hydrangeas grow and bloom this year, but first I will see the lilacs bloom. I don’t have very impressive lilac bushes, I will admit. The yard is very shady and I am not used to dealing with this type of plant. Lilacs don’t grow in Florida, where I lived for a long time. They thrive in US hardiness zones 3-7 and central Florida is in zone 9.

So I have been trying to help my Lilacs do better in the once-neglected yard of my newer house. The tall, gangly tree / bush at the corner of my house was tucked under a pine tree and hidden behind a piece of fence. Now the fence is gone, and so is the little pine. I’m hoping that now the lilac will get more sun and branch out and get bushy.

I know that it’s a good idea to trim off the flowers as they die and then leave the tree alone. Trimming too late will remove the blooms that set for the following year. Also do any pruning then too.

I recently learned something about pruning the suckers, or shoots that grow from the base of the shrub. I always thought I needed to remove them all so the main trunk would do better, but that is not so. I’ve read that only 2/3 of the suckers should be cut so the others can grow and fill in the shrub. I am going to try it.

My lilac flowers are dark purple. I don’t know if they are double blooms or not, but double bloom varieties are more fragrant. I counted a few big flowers at the top of my lilac tree last Spring. And although it didn’t have many, I could smell the fragrant flowers in that area of the yard. I don’t know if I should just buy a new bush and give up on the old one, or try to work with what I have.

Lavender, white, pink, purple and blue are the colors to be found among lilac varieties. President Lincoln is one of the popular blue flowering plants.

Bloomstruck is the New Purple Hydrangea For 2014

purple hydrangea flowers
Bloomstruck is Purple

There is a new Endless Summer hydrangea variety and it’s purple, or violet.  It’s called Bloomstruck. I’ve added a link to the name so you can see a picture of the actual plant. My photo here is of a blue bloom which I turned purple in my graphic program. But it looks similar to how the Bloomstruck variety may appear.

Endless Summer is a popular type of hydrangea to grow as it blooms profusely. It’s small enough in size to put the plant into a pot, or find a good space in the yard to plant hydrangeas to add lots of beautiful color. For most people the Endless Summer plant means blue flowers. I have a bush that is only two years old and it has amazingly pretty blue flowers in summer. I also have the Blushing Bride variety which is white. But these macrophylla plants have flower colors that will change according to the type of soil – it’s pH- used to grow them. And that includes this new Bloomstruck variety. It is shown as violet / purple, but the site also says that the flower color could be “rose-pink” or “blue”.

I don’t think I will be adding this one to my yard as I have run out of places to put perennials and I have enough hydrangeas at the moment. If you decide to try this one out I’d love to hear how you like it.

Hydrangeas at The End of Summer

pinky winky hydrangea
End of Summer Pinky Winky

It’s hard to believe that it is the end of summer now. I recently took some photos of the flowers remaining in bloom in the yard, and the Pinky Winky is one of the hydrangeas that still looks good.

Although the many deer that frequent my yard come to eat hydrangea buds and leaves, my Pinky Winky shrub still has flowers. They started white then began to show some light pink, and ended up dark pink with some white at the top. Some of the flowers are totally pink.

I think I will try to shape my hydrangeas better before they start blooming next year. This one could end up being a tall tree with the flowers standing upright out of the reach of deer maybe. Pruning will be an experiment, and hopefully I won’t mess up the plant so it won’t bloom. This year I let all my hydrangeas grow “wild” in any way they chose. It’s only their second year in my yard, so I didn’t want to mess with them too much. The Limelight plants are really long and droopy, but have loads of very pretty flowers. Those would do better if they were trimmed for next spring.

A Blue and A Lavender Flower

flowering hydrangea shrub
Endless Summer – Year 2

Last summer I planted this Endless Summer hydrangea variety in my front yard. This year it is larger and has bigger flowers. All flowers are blue except one which began as lavender and is now pink. You can see it in my photo here, on the right, lower side of the plant.

I guess my issue with this macrophylla type of plant is that the flowers are often hidden by the big leaves.  It’s also called a “big leaf” hydrangea.

The one with big white flowers is also hiding the beautiful blooms. I hope that in time, as the plants age and get stronger stems, that the flowers will show up better.

The plants are nice and healthy looking so I expect improvement each summer. This type will only be around 4 feet across. They don’t get really huge, to my knowledge.

The Big Leaf Hydrangea Variety

big hydrangea leaf blue flowers
Why It’s Named “Big Leaf”

The macrophylla hydrangea variety is also known as “big leaf” and I’m adding a photo here of my Endless Summer to show you the size of the leaves. This blue flowering plant is doing quite well.

The other macrophylla I have is Blushing Bride and it’s also blooming, but in white. It is also full of big, green leaves like this one. I’m hoping that as the plants mature, the flowers will show up better in stead of being hidden among the greenery.

The blue one has one big bloom on top which is slowing fading to lavender. And it has a small flower on the side which began as light lavender and is now changing to pink.

Go here to read more posts about the macrophylla hydrangea.

My Blue, Endless Summer Hydrangea is Blooming!

blue hydrangeas
My Endless Summer

My blue hydrangea bush is blooming and I want to share my pictures.

I went away on a little vacation a couple of weeks ago and when I returned, I found that my gardens were producing some flowers! And my Endless Summer, blue hydrangea had little flowers.

I’m always eager to see the color of the hydrangea flowers, and I had only grown them for one year previously, so I hoped they would be that same pretty blue. And they are! The bloom in my picture here is so lovely. I will be using it for some new stationery at my BlueHyd store.

In the mean time, I am taking the best photos and making posters to sell at the Zazzle store. I’ve enlarged the images so they will look fine as large size prints.  Just need to get them made.