Who doesn't enjoy a pretty bouquet of freshly cut flowers from the garden? But have you ever tried picking a bouquet of hydrangeas? I discovered the flowers are rather finicky. Once cut, and almost before the stems touch water, they wilt. So I stopped picking blooms and putting them into vases and waited until fall to prune.
Last fall, as I pruned my hydrangeas, instead of tossing the flower stems into my green can, I tied the stems together with string in groups of three and hung them upside down to dry. And I waited. I waited skeptically to see if they would all turn brown. The wait was worth it.
I was delighted with an intriguing assortment of different shapes and shades. As I placed the dried arrangement on my coffee table, I realized that this was a pretty bouquet of colorful and everlasting hydrangea blooms that I couldn't achieve when picked fresh.
A couple of tidbits I learned along the way about hydrangeas is that their flowers aren't limited to puffball shapes of white or pink or blue. With over 70 species of hydrangeas, including trees, shrubs, and dwarfs, there are multiple colors and many shapes available to plant in our gardens.
Hydrangea macrophylla, the most common bigleaf hydrangea, includes flower shapes described as mopheads, lacecaps and the mountain hydrangea with a flattened head and smaller flowers.
Hydrangea aborescens, a native to the United States, initially sports green blooms that eventually turn into white round flower heads with that look like snowballs.
Hydrangea paniculata shows off giant blooms with cone-shaped panicles up to 18 inches in length changing from white to pink with age.
Hydrangea quercifolia, also known as the Oakleaf hydrangea, produces single or double white blossoms. In the fall, its leaves turn orange, then red, and sometimes mahogany.
Hydrangea animola, or the climbing hydrangea, offers fragrance with its white lacecap flowers.
For a colored identification chart of hydrangea flower types, check out
https://www.gardenersoasis.com/types-of-hydrangeas/