- Hey, I'm Erik with Landscape Garden Centers, and we're going to talk about hydrangeas today.

(mellow music plays) Basically what you're going to see is there's different size flowers.

We have the conical type flowers, and then we also have a flatter or rounder flower.

And so these all have different names.

Paniculata is going to be the conical type flower.

And then you also have the smooth hydrangea or also called a macrophylla hydrangea, which is also a flatter flower.

The smooth hydrangea, that one can be used as a hedge.

That'll get to be about that three to four foot height.

Those will do very, very well in a part shade type area.

The conical or Paniculata hydrangea, these can get very big.

These can be 12 to 15 feet tall, and once they become established, you'll really be able to see how big the flower is compared to the plant.

There's also a climbing hydrangea.

Then that one is they turn out to be very, very beautiful.

They're kind of an insignificant flower.

Climbing hydrangea's going to be used best along the east side, something where it's going to have it's roots or it's feet are going to be in a cooler soil condition.

There is a type of hydrangea also that's called the Oak leaf hydrangea.

And you can kind of see that that one right here has kind of a similar shape to the oak leaf.

This one is known for, it'll have a pretty insignificant flower, but it will also have great fall color.

There's panicle hydrangeas.

They can be grown into a tree form.

This is a really cool hydrangea to use, easy to care of for, and a lot of times you don't even have to do anything by cutting them back.

You can just let them be, and they'll just continue to grow for you in the summertime.

Throughout the summer.

All of these hydrangea can handle full to part sun.

I would not suggest putting them in a blazing saddle sun, where it's up against a building, where it's up against something that's going to be extremely warm and where the soil temperature goes up.

So where it can have its feet cooler is going to be best, but in full sun, they should do very, very well.

Lots of different colors, lots of different sizes, lots of different varieties of hydrangeas out there.

They're developing them constantly.

And so there's always a new one that's out there.

The hydrangeas want well-drained soil.

Like we've been talking about.

Well-drained soil, meaning when we put water around it, the water drains into it.

And it does not sit around for days and days, and start to stink.

Macrophylla hydrangeas will respond to the different pH levels of the soil.

Changing the pH in the soil, you could get a, more of a blue by lowering the pH to make it more acid, or you could actually change the soil to have the flower turn more red if it was less, or more basic.

Now what they've been doing is there's less and less of having to mess around with the soil, and they're just producing great flowers, basically engineering them to get, get to the correct color.

So that's what's really awesome about hydrangeas is now they're, they're just coming out with some great flowering hydrangeas that are going to be good flowering.

And then also in the fall time, like with the Oak leaf, giving you some fall color.

Make sure that when you're looking at the hydrangeas, you find out which ones you want to use.

Macrophylla's, the blue hydrangea.

We want to have leave some of those stems up because they will actually re-leaf on those stems.

Other hydrangeas we'll want to start up from the base every year, like an Anabel, which is a smooth hydrangea, that one, you can take that one all the way down to the ground within four to six inches and trim those back, and then that will come back from the ground, growing out new shoots, very similar to a perennial.

Hydrangeas they're very, very popular right now.

The plant has been around for a long time, the smooth hydrangea is actually native to the United States.

People should have no problem growing those.

(mellow music plays) Look for them now in your neighborhood because they should be blooming.

I'm Erik with Landscape Garden Centers, and keep it growing.

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