Blushing
Bride Hydrangea
Like Endless Summer
The Original, Endless Summer Blushing Bride will add life and love to your
garden and home virtually all season long. Reliably blooming on both old and new
growth, you can experience the beauty of Blushing Bride again and again.
Vital Stats On
Endless Summer® Blushing Bride
The name of this
new Hydrangea macrophylla says it all. Pure white blooms with semi-double
florets gradually mature to a sweet, pink blush. The disease and
mildew-resistant foliage is an attractive dark green, providing a striking
background for Blushing Bride’s mophead blooms. Strong stems and branches keep
the plant sturdy and upright in the garden, and make it a perfect flower for
cutting.
Care and Growing
Tips
While easy to grow
and quite vigorous, it is important to care for the plant properly for best
results.
Endless Summer®
Blushing Bride, Hydrangea macrophylla 'Blushing Bride'
• Plant in Full
Sun to Part Shade location
• USDA
Hardiness Zones 4-9 (we are in zone 5)
• Mature Plant
Size: 3-5 feet tall and wide
• Keep soil
evenly moist
• Pink Blooms
in alkaline soils (if you add limestone to the soil)
• Blue Blooms
in acidic soils (if you add HydraBlue or aluminum sulfate)
Caring For Your
Endless Summer Blushing Bride
Endless Summer
Blushing Bride produces pure white blooms of semi-double florets that gradually
mature to a sweet, subtle blush of pink. While easy to grow and quite vigorous,
it is important to care for your plant properly for best results. Since growing
conditions vary widely, ask your local nursery for additional tips specific to
your region.
To encourage
re-bloom, remove spent flowers. Because Endless Summer Blushing Bride blooms on
new growth, you don’t have to wait until the next season to see baskets full of
new blooms.
Winter
Care
To ensure
over-wintering success in the first year, the following is recommended:
• Keep the soil
moist through the fall months until the ground is frozen.
• Cover the
plant with a four-inch layer of organic mulch (bark mulch, leaves, pine
needles etc.). Do this around Thanksgiving, after the ground has started to
freeze. There is no need to cover all stems to the tip. DO NOT cut them back
at all if you can help it. Cutting back any hydrangea, including Blushing
Bride, reduces the flowering for the next growing season.
• In the
spring uncover Blushing Bride the same time as you do your perennials, when
the ground is no longer frozen. The plant will grow from the base of the
plant and also from any old branches that survived winter. When new growth
is well along you can cut back any stems that have die back over the winter.
• Be patient.
Growth will come slowly until the heat of late spring stimulates the plant
to grow faster.
• Once you see
growth you can prune back the old branches to a finger width above the new
green growth.
• Sit back and
watch your plant grow and bloom, which depending on your climate should be
some time around the middle of July.
Pruning
Endless Summer &
Blushing Bride Hydrangea is very forgiving and will not suffer if left
un-pruned. In fact, young, recently planted shrubs are best left alone. Unlike
other Hydrangeas, your Endless Summer will bloom on both old and new wood,
branches that grew last year and the new branches from this year. Another unique
feature is that this hydrangea will continue to set buds and bloom throughout
the season; deadheading the spent flowers will encourage this. Feel free to cut
the blooms for drying or fresh cut in vases because you will actually encourage
the plant to produce more blossoms. Spring is the best time to prune. Many
people like to leave the spent blooms on their plant because it adds winter
interest. It may also act to insulate the new buds from frost and cold. They
should be removed in spring however.
Light
Requirements
Blushing Bride
prefers a sunny or semi-shaded site with morning sun and afternoon shade being
the ideal. When planted in containers with a regular water supply both
hydrangeas do perfectly well in the full sun.
Drying
Hydrangeas for Endless Pleasure
Air Drying
The single most
important thing about drying hydrangeas is not which method you use; it's
when you harvest them! Fresh, newly opened blooms seldom, if ever, dry well
in the open air. It is best to wait until the blooms begin to dry on the
shrub. The petals will have faded a bit and feel papery to the touch. At
this point, you can cut them, strip off the leaves and air-dry them in a
baskets or vase with or without water. If you have the space and the time,
hanging them upside down in an airy place out of direct sunlight works well
too.
Silica Gel
It is possible
to dry fresh blooms in Silica Gel to retain their natural blue and pink
colors. Silica Gel is available a most craft stores and isn't a gel at all.
It looks like white sand with blue crystals in it. This is an expensive,
time consuming method but the results are very beautiful. First of all
you'll need a large Tupperware-type container. The entire bloom needs to be
suspended in the gel. Always use dry blossoms. Add a base of Silica Gel to
the bottom of the container, then holding the bloom upside down, sift in
enough of the gel to completely cover the bloom and seal the container.
After 4 days, you can gently pour out the Silica Gel onto a newspaper (you
can save the gel and reuse it). Now your flower is dried, the colors
preserved and ready to use for decorating. Some people like to spray them
with hair spray at this point the help preserve them. Other people don't
like the slight gloss this adds, so try it on a small one and see what you
think.
Cat Litter
Believe it or
not, many floral arrangers are now using cat litter in the same way you use
Silica Gel. This is a much less expensive way to experiment with drying
hydrangeas. Use the finest textured, non-clumping cat litter available.
Dye
For the more
adventurous among you, try dying your dried hydrangeas for a special effect.
If you have a particular color scheme in your home or you need a specific
color bloom say for a wedding, this might be fun for you to try. This works
especially well with white blooms but you can of course, dye faded pink
blooms brighter pink and make blue flowers bluer. It works the same as dying
fabric. Get your dye up to the boiling point and dip your flowers one by
one, then hang them to dry. To get a variety of shades you can hold the
bloom in the dye for a longer or shorter amount of time. The cooler the
temperature of the dye the softer the tint will be. Use lots of newspaper,
they'll drip!
