Perennials: What\'s Blooming , 2 by DonnaMack

DonnaMack wrote:
Hi Wee,

Chardonnay does a pretty good job of holding onto its color. This is a picture of it on July 23 on the south side of my house. Pretty toasty there. The second picture is on August 25. By then, other things are screaming for my attention, like the lilies.

This plant just amazes me. I had it on the north side of my house in a higher ph soil and half the light and it did just as well. Sometimes I give it a lot of water, and sometimes almost none.

You know what puzzles me? So many plants are marketed so heavily that are fairly disappointing. In my experience, unless you perchase a 5 gallon macrophylla you are going to wait a long time for impressive bloom, and I find they really have to be burlapped in zone 5 - yes, including Endless Summer. I was given a big one and it was nice, but if you have a one gallon don\'t hold your breath. But I was given a little Chardonnay in 2009 (see the sweet little thing in the third picture), and by 2010, one year later, it already is blooming and performing, and has the two traits it was marketed for - the gorgeous bloom and the color. I can\'t say that for any hydrangea that size, and this year when I was considering adding them to an area I went with viburnums instead.

I never buy the new plants, even Proven Winners. Raulston trials plants and then sends them to me - hence Chardonnay. Otherwise I pick them up at the end of the season for a few dollars. But I find that a lot of the heavily marketed, patented and expensive plants are very disappointing. I get lots of feedback at the Help Desk at Master Gardeners. I picked up a good sized but very cheap LA Hydrangea and it\'s doing very little after two years.

I cannot keep persificolia or glomerata alive, after many, many tries. But Bernice persists - it doesn\'t increase, but that OK. Do not ever grow takesimana unless you want to divide and divide. It\'s great in my back yard where I am driving out creeping chralie and violets with it. It has to be controlled in my front yard. The horrible one is rapunculoides. I did not plant it. It comes from my idiot neighbors\' yards and invades everything. I am constantly digging it up because it has threadlike root, requiring extensive soil disturbance.