There are more than 230 hydrangeas growing in our Zone 6A garden in Upstate New York. And after growing this many, there are definitely a few things we wish we had known before planting our first shrubs.
Some of the most common hydrangea advice is more complicated than it sounds. Hydrangeas don’t always need shade. A hydrangea that isn’t blooming isn’t necessarily a bad plant. Flopping doesn’t always mean you’re doing something wrong. And sometimes the best thing you can do for a hydrangea is simply give it another year.
So, we’re sharing some of the most important hydrangea growing tips we’ve learned from growing more than 230 hydrangeas—what matters, what doesn’t, what we do differently now, and a few things that might surprise you.
One of the biggest oversimplifications we hear is that hydrangeas need shade.
That isn’t necessarily true.
In our Zone 6A Upstate New York garden, we have several different types of hydrangeas growing successfully in full sun, including bigleaf (Hydrangea macrophylla), panicle (Hydrangea paniculata), smooth (Hydrangea arborescens), and oakleaf hydrangeas.
But there’s an important caveat: where you garden matters.
Full sun in our Upstate New York garden isn’t the same as full sun in Georgia, Texas, or California. You have to consider your climate along with the amount of sunlight a plant receives.
We’ve also found two things make an enormous difference when growing hydrangeas in more sun: water and mulch.
Our full-sun Let’s Dance Sky View hydrangea hedge receives a deep soaking through drip irrigation every day during the hottest part of summer—roughly three to four gallons per plant.
Hydrangeas have shallow root systems that run relatively close to the soil surface, so consistent moisture is especially important.
We also maintain a few inches of compost around our plants. We use compost as mulch because it helps improve our sandy soil while also protecting those shallow hydrangea roots from the summer heat.
The lesson: Don’t automatically rule out a hydrangea because you have a sunny garden. Consider your climate, variety, irrigation, and soil moisture first.
If you plant a hydrangea during summer and suddenly see wilting or scorched leaves, it can be alarming.
We’ve seen it in our own garden.
We planted a grouping of Let’s Dance Sky View hydrangeas during one of the hottest parts of summer. Within their first few weeks, some developed leaf burn.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the plants are failing.
A newly planted hydrangea is adjusting to a completely different environment while trying to establish a new root system. It may wilt during the hottest part of the afternoon or show some sunburn as it acclimates.
Our priority during this period is deep, consistent watering and maintaining a good layer of compost around those shallow roots.
The plant you see during those first few weeks isn’t necessarily the hydrangea you’ll have once it becomes established.
One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned is that many common hydrangea frustrations can be avoided by choosing the right plant from the beginning.
Start by asking what you actually need the hydrangea to do.
Consider a hydrangea that flowers on new wood.
Smooth hydrangeas like Hydrangea arborescens produce their flowers on the current season’s growth. Panicle hydrangeas do the same.
That can make them especially useful in colder climates because you’re not relying on flower buds from the previous year to survive winter.
Look at the mature size rather than the size of the plant at the garden center.
Mature panicle hydrangeas such as Quick Fire and Pinky Winky can become substantial shrubs that create beautiful screening in the garden.
Choose a compact variety.
Let’s Dance Blue Jangles is a compact bigleaf hydrangea that gives us beautiful color without taking up the space of a much larger shrub.
Hydrangeas can work there, too.
Smaller macrophylla and panicle hydrangeas can be grown in appropriately sized containers. One advantage with a container-grown macrophylla in a cold climate like ours is that we can move it into a protected garage during winter, helping protect those old-wood flower buds from the harshest conditions.
The hydrangea you choose matters just as much as how you care for it.
Once you understand that different hydrangeas have different sizes, bloom habits, pruning needs, and growing requirements, hydrangea care becomes much easier.
It’s also exactly why we created our Hydrangea Handbook & Worksheets.
We took what we’ve learned growing more than 230 hydrangeas and created a resource you can actually use while planning, planting, and caring for your own hydrangeas.
It’s easy to underestimate how large a hydrangea will eventually become when you’re standing at the garden center looking at a small plant.
We try to plan for the mature shrub, not the plant we’re bringing home.
Our Pinky Winky Prime, for example, can eventually reach about eight feet tall and wide. We intentionally planted it where it has room to reach that size and eventually help screen part of our house.
But sometimes we intentionally bend the spacing recommendations.
Our Invincibelle Sublime hedge was planted about four feet on center because we wanted the individual plants to eventually merge into a mass of color.
And sometimes a hydrangea simply ignores your expectations.
Our Gatsby Pink oakleaf hydrangea has grown about three feet taller than we originally anticipated. Apparently, oakleaf hydrangeas really like our garden.
While you’re waiting for newly planted hydrangeas to reach their mature size, annuals are one of our favorite solutions for filling the gaps. You get immediate color without permanently crowding the hydrangeas you’re waiting to grow.
We used to think about hydrangeas more as individual specimen plants.
Now, we often use them almost architecturally.
Instead of planting one hydrangea here and another there, we use groups of three or more to create rhythm and repetition throughout the garden.
For example, a grouping of three Puffer Fish hydrangeas visually connects to another grouping across the garden, which then leads your eye toward Little Lime Punch.
The repetition creates movement.
And then there’s our hydrangea room.
This space takes the idea to an extreme, with more than 30 hydrangeas creating a garden room around a bench and small fountain. We alternate varieties including Invincibelle Lace, Invincibelle Sublime, Incrediball, Incredibelle Blush, Invincibelle Ruby, Invincibelle Spirit II, and Bobo.
As these plants mature and merge together, they’re creating something that feels much more intentional than a collection of individual shrubs.
If you’re designing a garden with hydrangeas, don’t only ask, “Where can I fit this plant?”
Ask, “What role can this plant play in the garden?”
It can completely change how you use hydrangeas in your landscape.
Hydrangea flopping is frustrating, but we’ve learned there isn’t one single reason it happens.
Sometimes it’s genetics.
Our Lime Rickey smooth hydrangea is an older variety that was prone to flopping and has since been discontinued. Newer introductions like Invincibelle Sublime have been bred with stronger, sturdier stems while still producing large flowers.
Sometimes it’s simply maturity.
Smooth hydrangeas can take three to five years to fully mature. Younger plants don’t necessarily have the established structure to support enormous flowers—especially after a summer storm fills those blooms with water.
Plant supports can help while you’re waiting for the shrub to mature.
And sometimes? It’s gardener error.
We learned that one ourselves.
We pruned a Quick Fire Fab hydrangea extremely hard in spring in an attempt to control its size. The plant responded with tremendous new growth.
The problem was that all that fresh growth was relatively weak, while Quick Fire Fab produces large, dense flowers. Add summer rain to those heavy flowers and…
Flop.
It’s why we recommend not cutting a panicle hydrangea back by more than about one-third when pruning.
“Why isn’t my hydrangea blooming?”
This might be the number-one hydrangea question we get.
Instead of guessing, we use a simple five-question diagnostic:
This process usually gets us much closer to the answer.
Take our Wee Bit Innocent hydrangea.
The foliage looks healthy. It gets enough light. We’ve never pruned it incorrectly.
But it’s a macrophylla hydrangea that blooms on old wood—and our garden experienced both a harsh winter and late frosts.
Those old-wood flower buds simply didn’t make it.
A new-wood blooming hydrangea develops its flower buds on growth produced during the current season.
That’s why smooth and panicle hydrangeas can be so reliable in cold climates. Even if winter damages the previous year’s stems, the plant can produce new growth and flower on it.
Old-wood hydrangeas form future flower buds on existing stems. Those buds have to make it through winter in order to produce the following year’s flowers.
And yes, pruning those stems at the wrong time can mean accidentally cutting off your flowers.
Understanding what type of hydrangea you own and whether it blooms on old or new wood is one of the most important things you can learn about your plant.
Before you can figure out pruning, blooming, or even some care issues, you need to know what you’re growing.
Our free Hydrangea ID Chart helps you identify the major types of hydrangeas and understand the differences that actually matter for their care.
There’s another characteristic we increasingly value in macrophylla hydrangeas: remontancy, or reblooming.
A reblooming hydrangea has the ability to produce flowers beyond those original old-wood buds.
For gardeners in colder climates, that’s a big deal.
Let’s Dance Blue Jangles, for example, can die back to the ground in our garden and still produce flowers on new growth.
Let’s Dance Sky View takes that even further. It’s been an impressive rebloomer for us, continuing to develop new buds and flowers even after winter kills those old-wood blooms.
We think of that ability almost like an insurance policy.
Gardeners in warmer zones may not experience the same level of macrophylla dieback that we do in Zone 6. But in our garden, choosing varieties with strong reblooming characteristics can make a significant difference.
With more than 230 hydrangeas, we can’t rely on one deer deterrent.
We’ve developed a three-part system:
During the growing season, we use Orbit Yard Enforcers connected to a live water line. When they sense movement at night, they send out a sudden spray of water that helps scare deer away.
We also have vinyl fencing along portions of the garden and added an almost-invisible deer fence across the back.
Finally, we spray.
We’ve had good results with Bobbex, particularly when we start spraying as fresh new growth emerges. That’s the growth deer are especially interested in, so we want the deterrent in place before they decide our garden is their new favorite restaurant.
What hasn’t worked particularly well for us?
Granular repellents, flashing lights, and loud noises haven’t given us the same results.
If you’ve found a deer deterrent that works especially well in your garden, share it in the comments. The more ideas we gardeners can share, the better.
Anyone who has seen the incredible blue hydrangeas on Cape Cod knows how beautiful a truly blue macrophylla can be.
We’re only about three and a half hours away, but our soil chemistry isn’t the same.
And that matters.
For macrophylla and serrata hydrangeas, soil pH affects whether flowers trend pink or blue. Our soil is more alkaline, which makes achieving those intense blues more difficult.
We’ve experimented with soil amendments, and we’ve had the most success using Jack’s Hydrangea Blue as a soil drench early in the season.
We’ve seen some beautiful blue results on hydrangeas like Let’s Dance Rhythmic Blue, although later flowers can still move toward lavender or pink as our natural soil conditions take over.
It’s something we continue to experiment with rather than expecting perfect control.
And that brings us to perhaps the biggest lesson growing 230+ hydrangeas has taught us:
Be patient.
A newly planted hydrangea isn’t the hydrangea you’re ultimately going to have.
Gardens don’t mature according to our preferred schedules. Some plants take several seasons to become what we imagined. A rough year doesn’t necessarily mean you have a bad plant.
Weather changes.
Bloom timing changes.
Winter happens.
Plants surprise you.
We’ve removed some hydrangeas, moved others, and given plenty of them one more year to prove themselves.
You can do everything right and the garden will still work on its own schedule. Part of becoming a better gardener is learning when to intervene—and when to simply give a plant another season.
And yes, sometimes it’s about planting another hydrangea simply because you love it.
We’ve learned an enormous amount from growing more than 230 hydrangeas in our own garden, but there’s much more than we could possibly cover in one video or blog post.
If you’re ready to go beyond individual tips and really understand how to choose, grow, troubleshoot, and care for your hydrangeas, our Hydrangea Handbook & Worksheets puts that information together in one place you can refer back to throughout the season.
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