Welcome To Hydrangea World!

Our relatively small yard is now home to a whopping 18 hydrangeas!

What I am now calling “Hydrangea World” began last fall,

with this informal hedge of oak leaf hydrangeas planted on our lot line:

We bought 7 plants, 8′-10’T, @ $11 apiece, from Menards,

+ 4 of them are happily blooming already:

Next up — the western foundation of our Dutch colonial:

Once again, we planted a row of hydrangeas —

this time in mixed varieties.

You guys.

Look at the gorgeous blue of that Twist ‘N Shout, 3’-5’T!

Once I spied it (at Menards), there was no going home without it! —

which means that there are now 2 of them in our foundation bed:

There are also 3 Pistachio hydrangeas, with beautiful pink blossoms, 3′-5’T:

Aren’t the petals beautiful?

At the window bay, we planted 3 Endless Summer hydrangeas, 3′-5’T:

Wow oh wow — that blue!

In my last post, I spoke of this fertilizer for acid-loving plants.

Turns out that hydrangeas love acid soil, + adding acid to said-same soil

results in blue Endless Summer hydrangea flowers.

That means I will be regularly fertilizing my hydrangeas with it,

as nobody loves the blue flower more than I do!

I would have happily added even more hydrangeas to our foundation,

but G.O. was insistent that we have a mixed-plant section.

Here ’tis

Upper left: Stirfry hosta 20″T x 36″W — Upper right: Ostrich fern 3′-5’T — Lower left: Younique Pink astilbe 16″-20″ — Lower right: Firefly coral bells 30″T-12″W

Coral bells

That’s going to look great, once the plants fill out, don’t you think?

And finally, in closing, here’s our climbing hydrangea (who knew?),

which was originally planted to grow up this trellis

on our garden shed . . .

. . . but which has since been transplanted to here,

underneath our pretty maple tree:

Wait.  What?

There’s an interesting story here; I’ll share soon.

As always, stay tuned!

 

Happily Fertilizing In The Garden

My friend in Florida suggested I use SUPERthrive vitamin plant brew,

. . . so I just fed it to everything in our garden . . .

. . . one watering can at a time!

It was quite a job, since we have lots of new plants in our yard,

but I love gardening so much, it’s not work for me!

Anything for my plants!

The instructions say that SUPERthrive can be used

in addition to other types of fertilizer.

That’s a good thing, considering all the “brews” that I add to my plants!

When anything new gets planted, we always add root stimulator,

a.k.a. Quick Start, by Miracle Grow.

As the season progresses, about once a week, I add fertilizer,

each one formulated for different sorts of plants.

My ferns + hydrangeas apparently grow best in acid soil,

so they are fed with this:

 Fun fact:

Endless Summer hydrangea flowers turn blue if their soil is acidic,

which means they’ll coordinate nicely with all my blue garden accesories.

Here’s one of three** we just planted, with my beloved bird bath,

made with a blue + white transfer ware plate:

The birdbath is resting on an old hollow tree stump,

+ the silvery green plants in the background are pulmonaria,

more commonly known as lungwort.

My pretty blue gazing ball usually rests nearby on a white iron stand.

This morning I was moving stuff around, so I just snapped its photo on the lawn:

Here is one of my most favorite garden accessories —

my cobalt blue glass star!

We have three** of them hanging from a branch of a tree,

where they manage to catch the sun in both morning + late afternoon.

** Why groups of three, you ask?

Design professionals insist that odd numbers

are more pleasing to the eye than even.

I do this in my interiors, too.

• * * *

Finally, in my quest for beautiful flowers + lots of ’em,

I add Bloom Booster to my flowering plants:

We planted an informal hedge of oak leaf hydrangeas last fall,

+ most of them are flowering already:

You may notice that the oak leaf hydrangea’s flowers are elongated

+ consist of hundreds of tiny, white petals . . .

. . . whereas the Endless Summers’ flowers are round-ish,

with larger petals.

What the hey — I have never met a hydrangea that I didn’t love!

We’ll probably add more to our garden as the summer progresses.

Stay tuned!

(If you’re interested in my post

about the front foundation bed of our Dutch colonial, go here.)