Hydrangeas 2026

I picked this bunch of hydrangeas to take into my mother n law at the rest home - she is 100. I planted hydrangeas along the top bank to cut down on maintenance because the bank is so slippery and this is my reward.

Hydrangeas arent always so populr these days as, like the name suggests they need quite a bit of water. In NZ we are lucky that it isn’t too big a deal, epecially thius summer as we have el nino weather conditions which means a lot of the weather is coming from the west so lots of water in it. Some of these beauties were started from cuttings and they have grown so beautifully, they are worth the effort. The gallery below shows them growing in situ.

Hydrangeas

These have been lovely this year. We have had enough rain to keep these ones on the bank at the back of the house flowering well. I really need to select some flowers to work on in my textile work. This bank is clay so when it is very dry it dries out a lot and then in the winter it becomes a slippery slide. As I am getting older I am less inclined to want to have to work on the bank so over the last few years I have been planting hydrangeas (mostly grown from cuttings on the bank. They are really starting to be the sculptural back drop I was aiming for - and of course it cuts down on the weeding that needs to be done. At some stage I will have to cut off the dead flower heads but they flower for ages so that won’t be till the weather is cooler - hopefully.

There is a range of colours here from bright pink through to move , blue and white with a few of the lacy ones intermingled in there. I can never understand why they are so expensive at the garden centres because they are so easy to propagate - although I guess it take two or three years for them to get to saleable stage