Hydrangea Harmony

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/08/2010 (5625 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Remember the Annabelle hydrangea? Or the PeeGee hydrangea?

As recently as 10 years ago, garden centres in Winnipeg and surrounding communities offered only a few choices of hydrangea varieties suitable for our harsh growing climate. The reliable Annabelle (hydrangea arborescens) could be counted on to bloom constantly in our shade gardens from mid-summer until fall, tantalizing us with its snowball-shaped, oversized heads of clustered white blooms. Sunnier locations in the garden suited the PeeGee hydrangea (hydrangea paniculata), with its distinctive cone-shaped blooms and unique colour changes throughout the blooming season.

Lesser-known hydrangeas such as Tardiva, Kyushu and Pink Diamond paled in comparison and failed to unseat the Annabelle or PeeGee from their popular place in the gardener’s imagination.

The emergence of the Endless Summer hydrangea, introduced in 2003 by Bailey Nurseries in St. Paul, Minn., began a revolution in the availability of hydrangea selections that are hardy or semi-hardy to our Zone 3 climate.

More importantly, it heralded an exciting opportunity for Manitoba gardeners to enjoy what has been a staple in the warmer climes of B.C. gardens. Finally, a new kid on the block! Their gorgeous colour of either pink or blue blooms — depending on how much effort the particular gardener was willing to expend on amending the soil — made them the preferred choice.

What the introduction of the Endless Summer hydrangea really heralded, however, was a sea change in gardeners’ attitudes towards the traditional concepts of unity and harmony, sometimes interpreted as uniformity. With the advent of a dizzying selection of newly introduced plant varieties each spring (the heuchera is a prime example), repetition be damned. One of each is now the order of the day!

Another traditional gardening concept, mass planting, presents a unique challenge to today’s gardener working on ever-smaller urban plots: When there are so many varieties of a single plant to choose from and so little space to plant in, the temptation is to toss the concept of mass planting altogether and have one of everything.

One must be careful, though, of indulging too indiscriminately in the temptations of the garden-centre buffet. The result can be a collector garden, so frowned upon by gardening experts of previous generations who preached the importance of colour echoes, repetition, unity and harmony, and even drifts of monochromatic colour. The challenge is to incorporate a sense of harmony in today’s diverse garden and to consider planting in groups of three.

The enormous popularity of the Endless Summer, The Original, (over 12 million sold since its introduction in 2003) has quickly been followed by new additions to the collection, including Blushing Bride and Twist-n-Shout. Other recent entries on the hydrangea scene include Limelight, Little Lamb, Quick Fire, Pinky Winky, Invincibelle, and most recently, Incrediball, an arborescens-type hydrangea.

Incrediball is similar to the Annabelle but produces basketball-sized blooms. Bigger is better, right? Many of the newer introductions of hydrangeas do sport sturdier stems that are less likely to flop over in the rain. The newest introduction, Bella Anna hydrangea, available in 2011 and suitable for our Zone 3, will no doubt persuade us to find space in our gardens for its magenta-pink blooms.

As Adrian Bloom, legendary plantsman and the former owner of Blooms of Bressingham Nursery, notes in a recent interview with Fine Gardening magazine, the urge to plant new varieties has sometimes seen the disappearance of reliable performers grown for years.

The next time you are visiting one of Winnipeg’s older neighbourhoods, with their established gardens, stop and enjoy the beauty of a mass planting of Annabelle or PeeGee. They still have something to offer.

Colleen Zacharias is a Master Gardener who serves as President of the Friends of Assiniboine Park Conservatory and Co-Chair of the Prairie Garden, Western Canada’s only gardening annual since 1937.