I'm a big fan of hydrangeas, and so it seems is the rest of New Zealand. As soon as they hit the garden centre shelves they sell out in next to no time.
They've shaken off their old-fashioned image and morphed into beautiful long-lasting blooms that the home gardener is enamoured with.
As a cut flower they're unsurpassed. Just a single bloom can fill a vase. Which is why they sometimes sell for $5-$6 a stem at florists. If I totalled up the number of blooms on my plants, at $5 a pop they'd be worth well over $1000. Not a bad return on six plants that have been in the ground for less than a year.
Those six plants are all moptops (Hydrangeas macrophylla), which, along with Hydrangea arborescens and Hydrangea paniculata are the three most commonly grown hydrangeas for cut flowers. Of those, the paniculata is the hardiest of them all and certainly tolerates more sun. It has attractive, pyramid-shaped white flowers that age to pink. The panicles are usually 15-20 centimetres long, but they can reach up to 45cm if selectively pruned (a little like disbudding dahlias – to get bigger blooms, several buds are removed). They flower later than the moptops and they also flower on new wood (unlike mop tops), which means they may be cut to the ground (down to one or two buds) after flowering or late in winter.
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