How to Fail with Your Hydrangeas in 10 Lessons

Hydrangeas (or Hydrangea in Latin) are renowned for being indestructible bushes; when planted in the right conditions, they outlive their owners and endure for decades. They are the quintessential foolproof shrub. Well, we assert this loudly and clearly, based on personal experience and the informed testimony of many customers: it is indeed possible to fail with a hydrangea!

Hydrangea macrophylla Wedding Gown

We offer you a step-by-step tutorial to help you tackle this challenging task, a true testament to the bad gardener.

Introduction

To fail with your hydrangea, the best approach is to take advantage of a quirk in the plant world: the small world of hydrangeas is divided into two main families,

sun-loving hydrangeas: H. paniculata, arborescens, and quercifolia
and all the others (macrophylla, serrata, aspera, sargentiana, involucrata...) whose growing conditions are almost diametrically opposed to those of H. paniculata and H. arborescens.

Paniculata/arborescens hydrangeas love the sun, tolerate relative drought, require severe pruning each year, and prefer rich, neutral soil. They are identifiable by their late foliage (first leaves in May) and their conical panicles for paniculata and quercifolia or hemispherical for arborescens.

All other hydrangeas prefer partial shade, hate lack of water, do not respond well to pruning, and need rich, acid-leaning soil.

These are the traditional macrophylla, which make up the large cohort of hydrangeas over 10 years old in the garden, the traditional ball-shaped hydrangeas. The serrata are similar in appearance but smaller and even more fond of cool shade; the aspera can be recognized by their velvety leaves...

You guessed it, if you treat a paniculata hydrangea according to the growing conditions of a macrophylla, and vice versa, you have a good chance of achieving a frankly disappointing result: most of the tips below are based on this simple principle.

Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle' and H. quercifolia in the background, thrive in the sun, tolerate calcareous soils and relative summer drought.

Hydrangea macrophylla at the edge of trees

**Lesson 1: To fail with your paniculata hydrangea... buy a hydrangea that looks dead in May.**

If you order a paniculata hydrangea from Promesse de fleurs (or another reputable nursery) in April-May, you will receive a magnificent specimen that looks dead: it will arrive with long, blackish stems, without leaves and almost without buds either... In short, something that looks exactly like a shrub that has been thirsty for at least six months, while your grandmother's lovely macrophylla hydrangeas already have leaves the size of a large Louis.

Paniculata are lazy, very lazy: they do not start their growth until mid-May, while the flowering of perennials is already largely over and the foliage of tulips is finishing drying...

So throw your "dead" hydrangea in the bin, or perhaps leave it for 3 weeks in full sun without watering, and request a refund. If by mistake you plant it anyway, you will be surprised and confused to see it inevitably burst into green within a few days, sometime during the second half of May.

Are you smiling? Well, every year in May, we receive dozens of calls from desperate customers who see their paniculata hydrangea planted in autumn or spring, desperately without foliage. So much so that, for a few years now, we have been sticking labels on the pots of paniculata hydrangeas we ship in April-May, stating in essence: "this is not a dead hydrangea".

Lesson 2: To fail with your hydrangea, plant it in pure heather soil.

You read it in a (bad) gardening manual: "you must plant hydrangeas in heather soil"; or you read in a (good) gardening manual: macrophylla hydrangeas prefer acid-leaning soil.

So, you buy a large bag of heather soil, you plant your hydrangea in pure heather soil that is poor and low in nutrients, and after 3 months, as if by magic, you will start to see your hydrangea decline: sickly, yellowing leaves that tend to droop...

Normal, your hydrangea is dying a slow death, from thirst and hunger. Heather soils are acidic, but they are also extremely draining, so they do not retain water or nutrients at all: unless you water practically every day and add fertiliser twice a month, you will end up losing them.

And yes, macrophylla hydrangeas love acidophilous potting soil, meaning a rich substrate with a good organic content, with real water retention capacity thanks to the presence of turf, with an acidic pH: in English, good black woodland soil.

But if you plant your hydrangeas in pure heather soil, they will say, like most "heather soil" plants: "heather soil killed me"

Lesson 3: To fail with your macrophylla hydrangea, plant it in a field of stones (calcareous) or in pure chalk.

Macrophylla hydrangeas need neutral or acidic soil. In strongly calcareous soil, they do not establish properly and show poor growth, yellowing leaves, signs of chlorosis. And over time, they will eventually die... Unless you uproot them to replant them in a good amount of potting soil.

In contrast, paniculata hydrangeas and especially arborescens and quercifolia tolerate reasonably calcareous soils well. This is one of the reasons for their success in recent years.

Lesson 4: To fail with your macrophylla hydrangea, plant it in full sun, in southern France, in very draining soil, without watering.

Macrophylla hydrangeas accept full sun... but they are great water drinkers: if the soil dries out, they will quickly become thirsty, with a characteristic signal: the leaves start to droop lamentably.

Quite spectacularly, after watering, they regain their vigour within a few hours. But if you repeat this operation regularly, or if you go on holiday for 3 weeks in August, you will succeed in losing your hydrangeas. I guarantee it; I have personally practiced this method, and it works very well to kill hydrangeas.

Lesson 5: To fail the flowering of your paniculata hydrangeas: plant them in the shade.

As you read in your (bad) gardening manual that hydrangeas should be planted in the shade, you plant your magnificent Hydrangea paniculata 'Vanille Fraise' facing north.

It will grow well, very well indeed. With magnificent large green stems. But you will have no flowers, or ridiculous little ugly flowers. To bloom well, paniculata hydrangeas need sun, lots of sun: west or south exposure, or at least an east exposure that is well cleared with sun until at least noon.

If they do not have sun, they will not bloom or will bloom very little. And the few flowers of your "Vanille-Fraise" will remain desperately white, instead of taking on their famous pink colour at the end of summer.

Macrophylla and serrata hydrangeas, on the other hand, are much more tolerant of shade: they bloom well if they get a bit of sun. But if they do not get any sun at all, they too will have a very disappointing bloom.

Lesson 6: To have an ugly paniculata hydrangea, do not prune it

I am not a pruning fanatic. Rather, I am an advocate of letting go, which allows me to fail at many things in the garden without effort; I do not like to prune these poor plants... I have thus failed many paniculata.

As for paniculata, not pruning allows, after a year or two, to achieve a rather lamentable result. Indeed, paniculata grow quickly, and their long stems come from the base, with very few branches; the flowers are large and heavy. Therefore, an unpruned paniculata hydrangea will take on the appearance of a weeping old man after a couple of years, with lanky stems bending to the ground, and at the slightest rain, the flowers will get dirty on the ground, with a visually unappealing look (unless you are a fan of beauty contests in the mud).

Paniculata hydrangeas must be pruned every year: at least one third of the height of the stems, at most two thirds. They will thus remain beautiful and maintain a proper habit.

And the more you prune, the larger the flowers will be.

However, it should be noted that you will not succeed in damaging them by pruning at the wrong time: while the best time to refresh them is early spring, they tolerate, without flinching, pruning throughout the year.

Lesson 7: To have a macrophylla hydrangea without flowers, prune it... like a paniculata hydrangea!

You read: "Prune your Hydrangea paniculata 'Pinky Winky' every year early in spring by reducing the stems by half", and so you methodically apply this pruning technique to the sumptuous Hydrangea macrophylla 'Ayesha' that your mother-in-law gave you.

This is a simple method to implement and effective for removing all the flower buds from your macrophylla. If you prune this way regularly every year, the macrophylla hydrangea will never bloom, which will give you an additional reason to resent it (we're talking about the mother-in-law).

Macrophylla hydrangeas bloom on the wood of the previous year. If you prune the branches every year, they will never bloom.

And generally, the less you prune macrophylla, the better they do: a light pruning of unbalanced branches, and every two years, the removal of large old woody and weakened stems in the centre of the plant, cutting them close to the ground, will suffice for their happiness.

Lesson 8: To fail with your blue-flowered hydrangea, live somewhere other than Brittany.

Last summer, you saw in the garden of that Breton presbytery those magnificent hydrangeas with bright blue flowers, almost metallic, and you replanted the same in your garden... well, if you do not live in Brittany (or in a region with very acidic soil), you will naturally fail, without even making the slightest mistake: depending on the nature of your soil, the flowers will oscillate between a dirty pink and an undefined mauve.

You can add blueing agents to the hydrangea, alum powder, crushed slate... Nothing will work. If your soil is not an acid-leaning potting soil, these additives will not be sufficient.

And if, in front of your disheartened expression, a sympathetic partner tells you that "yes, yes, it is a bit blue after all", beware of this charitable lie: he (or she) probably has something to atone for.

Blue hydrangeas (macrophylla or serrata) need a humus-rich soil, rich in alum sulfate and decidedly acidic.

If the soil in your garden does not have these qualities, failure is certain, unless you dig an elephant-sized hole and fill it with crushed slate and acidic potting soil, or plant your hydrangea in a large pot with the same potting soil, monitoring the watering to prevent the soil from drying out.

→ to read on the subject: "The Colour of Hydrangeas"

Lesson 9: To fail the flowering of all your hydrangeas, feed them over and over.

You know from experience that a small dose of fertiliser stimulates the flowering of your annual plants, and your hydrangeas are no exception to this advertising rule "never water without Algo". With this hypercaloric diet, the foliage changes, becoming greener and more lush. Encouraged by this promising result, you double the doses and see your shrub change; the stems are thicker and longer, and your little hydrangea planted in front of the house now measures 3 m high, with leaves as large as rhubarb from the vegetable garden... you have obtained a superb green plant devoid of flowers.

Planted in naturally rich soil, hydrangeas bloom properly. If they benefit from light and coolness, their flowering will be improved. Note that fertiliser should be used sparingly and only for plants grown in pots.

Lesson 10 and final lesson: To fail with your climbing hydrangea

Perhaps you know the magnificent climbing hydrangeas, petiolaris, seemanii with evergreen foliage, or their cousins Schizophragma. They are fabulously useful in the garden as they are the only climbers that bloom in the shade, even complete shade.

They are quite easy to fail, especially in the two years following planting: requiring good acidic potting soil, they do not tolerate lack of water, and are quite sensitive to severe cold.

We recommend them to anyone who struggles to fail with more traditional hydrangeas. I have personally had the sad experience of failing with a seemanii, for rather obscure reasons, perhaps too much water, a couple of years ago.

But perhaps, in your gardening experience, you have other tips for learning how to fail with a hydrangea?

Share them with us!