New Hydrangea Arborescens Mail Orders: Invincibelle Ruby and Incrediball Blush!

Invincibelle Ruby (stock photo)

Due to my failure to find these at any physical nursery (yet), I have decided to mail-order these from Garden Crossings in Michigan. A couple of years back, well-known plantsman Tim Wood at Spring Meadow Nursery in Grand Haven MI tweaked some hydrangea arborescens into producing some stronger blooms and stems when it comes to the pink and red spectrums. These will be in within a week's time and planted, and will be getting revved up over the winter for the 2017 growing season!

Incrediball Blush (stock photo)

Review: Westmoreland County Nurseries

Today's haul (containers with hydrangeas) courtesy of Greensburg Home Depot. Sorry, local garden centers, you didn't cut the mustard!

Today I stopped out to some Westmoreland Co. garden centers and nurseries, and by the time I made my last stop at Home Depot I was never so happy to see a big box store. Kind of a waste of gas and overall disappointing. Some of these places are run down and half-overrun with weeds. It's like they don't even have a person to go around and tidy up. What gives???

Here's my summary of where I stopped:

1. Plumline Nursery (Allegheny/Westmoreland border) - 3.5/5 Stars. For 2016, this garden center and nursery was largely renovated with added parking, a new inventory layout and an entirely new checkout shanty. Their annuals were 75% off for Fourth of July week, which is a pretty good sale. Still above average prices on everything else.

2. Camp Joann Nursery (Apollo) - 2.5/5 Stars. Small selection. Somewhat expensive for product sizes. They were running a number of sales on various products, which is appropriate for this time of year.

3. Stallard Garden Center (Mamont) - 1/5 Stars. Didn't even turn in, it looked run-down from the road and I saw no selection. Old shells of hoop greenhouses could be seen in adjacent field. What gives???

4. Sieg Nature Gardens (Export) - 2/5 Stars. Nice little lot, but small selection and high prices. Sale prices on annuals didn't really make anything worth buying.

5. Country Farms (Greensburg) - 4/5 Stars. Always fairly well stocked and the staff is plentiful and helpful. Their interior retail area has an interesting old wood floor. Charming.

6. Greensburg Landscape Center - 1/5 Stars. They brag about 10,000 plants in stock, but only a few hundred generic varieties could be seen in their "nursery" area. No employees to be seen anywhere.

7. Heasley Brothers' Nursery - Google sent me to a residential address in Greensburg. Somebody needs to fix this!!!

8. Garden Envy - Yelp says this is a garden center but apparently it's a wedding planning service. Nothing but a grassy field at Google's "location".

9. Greensburg Garden Center - not a garden center, it's an events hall!!!

10. Wolfe Nursery (Hempfield) - 2.5/5 Stars. Another disheveled place, no sign to get into the "parking lot" - weeds everywhere. Nursery stock was half the quality of what it was last year. Completely unappealing!

11. King Garden Palace & Nursery - closed since 2008. I don't get what the point is in having places listed online that no longer exist. No idea.

Hydrangea Arborescens Haas Halo Lives Up To The Hype!

Hydrangea arborescens 'Haas Halo'. Yes, this is MY plant!

In 2013-14 Plants Nouveau group helped introduce to the market a new naturally-occurring sport of hydrangea arborescens that was found in eastern PA, called 'Haas Halo'. As with most plants of this species, it grows to about five feet tall and can expand more or less infinitely via sucker shoots that appear in the soil yearly. The foliage color is the same as most plants of this species, and flower heads can be best described as a lacecap version of Proven Winners' Incrediball. More specifically, each head can get up to about the size of a dinner plate and features a small number of sterile florets around and interlacing with a large number of fertile florets. Since there are a low number of sterile florets in each flower head, the plant is very flop resistant during heavy rain storms!

Size of mature bloom. Courtesy of Plants Nouveau

New Hydrangeas Lime Lovebird, Grateful Red, Fuchsia Glow Are Solid Replacements for Merritt's Supreme, F&E Red, etc.

A "perennial challenge" for many years now has been the seemingly never-ending quest for hydrangea breeders to come up with reliable plants that display reddish or dark pink hues, and can do this on current year's growth! Starting around 2014, solutions started being introduced, but it takes another year for these to hit the market and a whole winter to get tested. And that brings us here.

Have trouble getting your Merritt's Supreme, Red Sensation, Maltisse, etc. to bloom year after year after year? Yep, thought so! Now there are actually some reasonable solutions on the market. They are (drum roll please)... Fuchsia Glow (Garden Debut), Grateful Red (McKay Nurseries), and Lime Lovebird (Ball Horticultural).

Grateful Red produces the brightest red (akin to the red Knockout Rose), with Fuchsia glow holding down a dark pink (closest to Merritt's Supreme). Both plants have averagely-green leaves. Lime Lovebird blooms a vivid hot dark pink and has somewhat dark foliage with ruddy-colored leaf nodes. Not sure which of these are the largest, but all grow to at least 3x3' in height and do well in part sun (4-5 hours direct).

All three of these entries serve as fine specimens on the (guaranteed) pink end of the hydrangea macrophylla spectrum. Pictures are as follows!

Grateful Red (stock photo).

Lime Lovebird (infant bloom stage). Yes, this is MY plant.

Fuchsia glow (infant bloom stage). Yes, this is MY plant!

My New Hydrangea Macrophylla: Firefly (Horcos)

Yes, this is my plant!

Please allow me to take a few moments to give an initial review of a brand new hydrangea macrophylla to hit the market this year: Firefly! (scientific cultivar name: Horcos). This is a sturdy, robust plant that's supposed to grow to about 4x4' in height. It appears to be very sun tolerant, as mine has been in-ground for a couple of months now and has shown no droop, wilting, or scorching of any kind - pretty good for a new planting!

This blooms with semi-doubled almost bicolored flowers, which start whitish in the centers with pink edges, then change to mostly a vivid pink as time passes. I do not yet know what the spent blooms will look light. The foliage is a vivid bright/deep green with red accents along the edges and along the stems.

I bought mine at Trax Farms nursery in Finleyville off PA Route 88 in a 3-gallon for close to $40. Last I checked they were low, but I believe LMS in Allison Park has some in stock.

My Gardens: 2016 Video Tour!

The following is a video I made on June 28 using an iPhone 6. In this tour you finally get an interactive perspective of my property layout and the current setup of the beds. This is a far cry from my old pictures on here! I even begin to discuss my transition to annual an container gardening, now that my beds are more or less full. Check out how much everything has grown in the last 7+ years! Running time 23 minutes, YouTube.

At last! For your viewing pleasure! Questions or comments, please leave them on the video page on YouTube.

Containerizing Non-Blooming Hydrangea Macropylla!

In 2014-15 I decided to begin to dig up some of the hydrangea macrophyllas that have been having trouble blooming after winters and have been placing them in large containers (~20-24" diameter, ~10-15 gallon). This is because I am transitioning to overwintering only the top performers outdoors (the ones that are about guaranteed to bloom on current year's growth). The containers reside in my (attached and indirectly heated) garage for the winter and are watered about once monthly from December-March.

Shown: Pink n' Pretty (Monrovia) and Abracadabra Orb (Proven Winners).

The advantages of containerizing are as follows:
- freedom of placement around the property (masks, covers, fillers)
- guaranteed bloom
- larger size than if overwintered in-ground and suffering dieback

The following cultivars are the ones I am currently growing in containers:

All Summer Beauty (pale pastel variant of Nikko Blue)
Preziosa (fairly hardy outside, but need to guarantee a larger plant with the unique mophead blooms!)
Firelight / Leuchtfeuer (2) - for bookend use on my deck
Mathilda Gutges / LA Dreamin'
Pink n' Pretty
Abracadabra Orb
Forever & Ever Blue Heaven
Forever & Ever White Out (3)
Forever & Ever Fantasia
Forever & Ever Red / Maltisse
Forever & Ever Red / Red Sensation
Early Blue
Pia
Doublicious
Trophee
Pink Sensation
Hot Red
Red Beauty
Unnamed blue/pink mophead
Midnight Duchess (lacecap)
Mme Emile Mouillere
Queen of Pearls
Double Delights Perfection
Claudie (lacecap)
Blue Wave (lacecap)
Zorro (lacecap)
Free Bird (new!)

Here are some additional pictures:

West side of house (mostly shaded)

Under deck, front: Trophee, Doublicious, Blue Wave, Blue Heaven. Rear: Preziosa

Smaller containers on front porch: Early Blue, Pia, F&E White Out (2), Pink Sensation, Red Beauty, Hot Red.

Swing Bookends! Free Bird, All Summer Beauty

Some new hydrangea entries for 2016-17

These are from the current Star Roses Catalogue. You can get the first two at select nurseries NOW, and the McKay plant has just been made available directly from McKay Nurseries (WI). Violet Crown is supposed to be available this Fall.

'Cherry Explosion': An Exciting New Lacecap Hydrangea Macrophylla for 2016

McKay Nurseries in Wisconsin has done it again! Following up last year's introduction of Grateful Red, a mophead hydrangea macrophylla, comes Cherry Explosion, a lacecap variant! 

H. mac Cherry Explosion, bloom closeup. Yes, this is MY plant!

As with GR, this plant sports a semi-compact size, mounded habit, medium to dark green foliage, and  can bloom on new wood. As of June 2016 t's available NOW, directly from their website and is or will be available from select mail-order websites as well. 

Cherry Explosion, young plant, growth habit.