It’s the time of year to trim your hydrangeas for shape. Depending on which variety you have, it depends on how aggressively you want to prune. Either way, you do trim the old dead flowers off. Now, how do you know the difference? Is it the shape, the cone shape versus the ones that are round? There’s several that have round flowers. There’s an arborescent variety of hydrangea that has a white round flower, one of the old-fashioned ones called annabelle or an arborescence hydrangea. They’re very hardy, very adaptable to a lot of different growing environments. Those guys can be planted in morning or afternoon sun.

In general, there’s more Endless Summer varieties, which are in the macrophylla family. You can tell by the leaves specifically, but it kind of gives you a little bit of guidance as far as the shape of the flower. If the flower is cone-shaped, that’s either a oak leaf hydrangea or a paniculata hydrangea, and they are easier to take care of than the macrophylla style hydrangeas. They really like morning sun and afternoon shade, and they have a really big leathery glossy green leaf. Because that leaf is so large, a lot of times in the hot afternoon sun it can scorch and burn around the edges without enough moisture. It’s better to plant them in morning sun for that style of plant.  They are the easiest to grow and the most adaptable, and they just need three to four hours or more of sun a day.

The macrophyllas are the ones that are a little bit more work, and you got to do a little bit more watering and fertilizing to get them to produce blooms.

For round varieties, sometimes the canes, which are the old stems that are still there, they live through the winter. Sometimes they experience some dieback. So, take your thumbnail, fingernail, and scratch at the tip of the cane. If it’s green underneath the outer bark, it’s still alive. Then all you’re going to do is trim those for shape to make the bush a nice, even, round shape again. You’re only going to maybe take off a few inches there when you’re doing it that way. If you scratch the stem and it’s not green underneath, you’ll work your way further down the stem until you find green wood, and you do want to trim it back to where you find green wood.

Have fun trimming your hydrangeas this spring! And if you’re looking to change the color, we have mixes in stock to help adjust your soil’s PH and shift those colors.