I got my first look yesterday at a few of them. I have got to say I can see why people get mesmerized by hydrangeas. The different forms are forever entertaining. I love to look at them all. If I had more land I would be a hydrangea junkie for sure.
Yesterday I just couldn't walk by a Frau Mariko, I had to get it. The 5 gallon pot was so big and fat and happy. Fully loaded.
I had such a hard time walking on by Frau Reiko. I am still having an feisty innerdebate over whether to run back an grab it.
I just loved the center. Are these the true flowers?
Kell, Those are magnificent. We don't have any of that variety in our area. I got to go lookin' on the web. Thanks for sharing the photos.
I really liked them too! They also had a pink variety there.
Frau Sachiko
Kell, those hydrangeas are "to die for". I haven't seen any like those around here either. I would have grabbed one of each for sure! Great pics. Jenny
I'll be in California next week.I hope that I can find a place that will sell me small plants.Carry on plants is what I am planning.
My son (we are visiting him) said "stop buying plants.Wait till you get here.You will go crazy."
Those are just beyond words.
Nancy
I hope you have a great visit, Nancy. Which part of California will you be in?
Great advice! I'll do just that.
Kell we are going to a folk music festival in the LA area and them drving up to Berkely to visit our son.We have 2 weeks and I can do alot of damage.
In Berkeley there are 2 nurseries you must go to!
BERKELEY HORTICULTURAL NURSERY
http://www.berkeleyhort.com/
EAST BAY NURSERY
http://www.eastbaynursery.com/
And further down is Regan's. It is my favorite and it is right off the freeway. 880. http://www.regannursery.com/
And of course Annies which is in the opposite direction. She sells 4 inch plants to all the nurseries. She is open for business retail also
http://www.anniesannuals.com/
If you can a trip into San Francisco to the Conservatory of Flowers is incredible. My favorite place in the world. http://www.conservatoryofflowers.org/
The Arboretum is right next to the Conservatory. It is a great place to walk and enjoy life.
http://www.sfbotanicalgarden.org/
And Berkeley has a great botanical garden too.
http://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu/
You will have a ball. Have the best trip!
I love that first hydrangea, Kell. I haven't seen those at the nurseries here in San Jose. I wonder if some place like Yamagami's would carry it? I don't have time to get up to Berkeley. Is that where you found them?
No Tracey, at Navlets in Fremont. They had 1 more of the first one so call first and have them put it on hold. It was the only purple one. It was really a big one full of blooms too.
Kell,
They are absolutely gorgeous!
If I were you, I would stop that inner debate and go back to get the other one! Seriously!
Thanks for sharing!
Gail
I saw several of them at Tassajara Nursery in Danville last weekend too (resisted the temptation because I need a landscape plan at my new place before I'm allowed to plant anything!)
Ahh yes those wonderful Hydrangea macrophylla.
Don't we all lust after them. But you Southern States must forget about these.
Don't you remember your last March/April frost after a very mild January/February?
So just settle for you natives or Japanese Mountain Hydrangeas.
Sorry
Wolfgang
Thanks for your comments, wooffi. I guess I would never have thought about late frosts and hydrangeas. So, do Dirrs' comments about Hydrangea Serrata apply to these hydrangeas that we find nice looking? I haven't taken the time to research them, so I'm being lazy. They sure are nice looking. Do you have leads for Japanese Mountain Hydrangeas? I'm not familiar with them. I just grow traditional mopheads and lacecaps with a few endless summers I've placed in containers. Thanks for your comments.
I have a white hydrangea ,it is planted in the shade and all the white flowers are turning green
i was told it needed to be planted in the shade . is it my soil? help i want it to stay white any suggestions? thanks debbie in Louisiana
Debbie, some of the whites will turn green as the flowers dry out. Also, some start blooming looking green and then get their colors as they open up. Your soil should have nothing to do with this. The colors that are affected by soil are the pinks and blues. whites just remain white. In LA, I'd say shade is going to be fine as long as it's not really dense shade.
Peony, go to www.heronswood.com and take a look at their hydrangeas. This would be for reference only, since Burpee just closed them down. (A GREAT loss in the Northwest and in the larger gardening community as a whole). They are moving the whole operation to Pennsylvania (to serve their customers better, they say. I guess those of us in the northwest are not their customers. Sorry , just a little bit bitter here.)
Anyway, Dan Hinkely, founder of Heronswood, has done much to introduce the Japanese forest hydrangeas to U.S. gardens. You'll find a number of interesting cultivars there. If you want to order any, better hurry up because they are packing everything up even as we speak and who knows what they will offer later.
These have a more delicate growing habit than the macrophyllas, are generally smaller, and have more delicate flowers. I've put in a number of them this year, but no blooms yet.
You can't order from Heronswood right now, they stopped taking orders on 6/26 because they won't ship in the summertime. Supposedly shipping will start again in September, but who knows whether the selection will be the same given the move to PA.
Forest Farm I think has a decent selection of hydrangeas too, nothing near the cool rare types that Heronswood has, but if you're just looking to branch out from standard ones that you can find at every nursery they have some nice ones. And I believe they ship all year.
Well, I just received an order from Heronswood yesterday. Maybe they are just shipping out the stuff they were backed up on. One of the Dgers in Illinois is getting an order from there, too. I went ahead and ordered because I can't believe that the selection will ever be the same again. I had been at the nursery a couple of weeks before the closure. Had I known they were closing, I would have bought much more. After this order I will not ever knowingly buy anything from Burpee again.
They had only two of the four I ordered: H. serrata 'Iyono-usuzumi', and H. serrata 'Yae no Amacha'.
Here's a thread you might be interested in:
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/609256/
This message was edited Jul 1, 2006 10:31 AM
They were accepting orders through 6/26, any orders that came in by then they would ship out, but after that they weren't accepting new orders after the 26th, at least that's what the site said last weekend. So someone who got their order in before the 26th will still get their stuff, but I don't think you can go back to the site and order anything now.
Pixydish, Thanks for the link. We just finished a 10 day trip through the Delaware Valley visiting America's great public gardens. Thank God for the DuPont legacy. The gardens are so wonderful to visit. Chanticleer is a garden that has only been open to the public since '93. It pales in comparison to Longwood, but its 35 acres are so wonderful to visit. Their gardeners were so receptive to talking to us. I mention this only because it is a great place for gardens.
I don't know where Herronswood is relocating, but if it's near the Delaware Valley, I understand.
Thanks.
Thanks, Pixydish, I was talking about their relocating the nursery business. Wonder why they are doing it? Has it ceased to be profitable? The one constant in our lives is change. Sometimes it doesn't make a great deal of sense.
The thread that Pixydish linked to in the 7/1 post tells the story...
I read every word of the thread. I understand, Pixydish, your grievances. Mr. Hinckly and Mr. Jones sold the nursery for a profit, yet you attach no responsibility nor blame. You blame the buyer who now has the authority to do what they wish to do with the nursery. One of your supporters wrote that most people who garden do so for political reasons. I can assure you that I do not. I'm just a gardener - I'm not pretending to change the world. I don't have the answers to questions about change such as this, but I'm not an elitist who believes that an unprofitable nursery should be kept in business. I do hope that the employees received normal severance benefits, but your state government should ensure that they do. I do not wish to be rude, but I do wish to express a different view. The nursery was just another unsuccessful business venture that has passed into our history. What happens to the garden depends on the local activity of its residents. I have read and value your thoughts. Peace.
Without making this thread into a 'hersonwood' thread, let me say that certainly Burpee has every right to close the nursery. These things happen all the time. what I object to is A) the way it was done, B) the fact that Burpee's public statements sound like they were mighty surprised that they hadn't been able to turn a huge profit by marketing Heronswood to a wider gardening community. This nursery has never been a slick money maker - Burpee bought a very small nursery with a definite niche market to gardeners who like rare and unusual plants. Your'e never going to find 'early girl' tomatoes or the latest style of marigold there. There is absolutely nothing wrong with 'early girl' tomatoes or marigolds, I grow them myself, but that's not what this nursery was about. The nursery was popular world wide, but certainly the Northwest was the keystone of its customer base. To buy this place saying that everything would continue to go just as it had been in order to make the seller comfortable selling feels like lying to me when it was never any secret that the nursery made little money and that most of the customers lived in this geographic area. In his comments about the closure, Mr. Ball has said that he wanted to start making plants that would appeal to his customers, who live in the northeast. I guess I'm wondering at what point he discovered that heronswood was in the Northwest and that their largest customer base also lives in the Northwest?
Had the corporation given the community a 'heads up' that they had this in the works, they could have saved themselves a public relations snaffu by working with the community to get the gardens preserved, something that would have shown that they meant what they said at contract signing time. Ultimately, it is Dan Hinkley who put his garden at risk and I believe everyone knows this, including Dan himself. I guess it was his mistake to believe what he was told.
I guess I didn't give the post about gardening for political reasons much thought. I don't know any gardeners who garden for political reasons - I'm not even sure what that means. In terms of being an elitist, I don't think I am one. Maybe I am, but if so it surprises me. I buy plants from all over. What I do think is that if someone buys a boat and expects it to suddenly grow wheels and appeal to the land traveling crowd they need to have their head examined. And this is just what Burpee claims to have done.
The employees did get severance pay, which is good because if a company comes in and closes the place down without even a day's notice, I think it should be up to the company, not the government, to pick up the tab for severance pay.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. And thanks for being able to disagree and still have class! Peace to you always.
Sorry for getting back this late into the subject. I agree with Pixydish on the Heronswood demise. We also used them a lot for our selection plants. Often to get some mother plants for propagation. What an informative catalog they had.
Since we are nursery owners ourself, it made us feel very humble looking at their absolutely stunning selection.
The new catalog is just another glossy Burpee version.
Thank the Lord there is still Tony Avent and 'Plant Delight'. Another source for great, rare plants.
To your question peony01, we have been rather successful growing and propagating these wonderful and often petite hydrangeas. We almost got an exclusive collection trough the 'Pride of Place Plants' in Canada. Serratas never shown in the US.
But the US Government confiscated them because the quarantine requirements between Canada and the US where not met. Since they came directly from Japan, a two year waiting period needed to be met.
So now we do with what we have, still always keeping a lookout for new varieties. A lot of these new plants come in through a 'legal' back door, which is Holland and Germany. We are just too small to overcome all these restrictions.
But you may enjoy a look at our hydrangeas
http://www.gardensoyvey.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=1_26
Thanks
Wolfgang
Oh too bad about the quarantine!! Were these the ones you would have been getting? http://www.prideofplaceplants.com/masters-hydrangea.html
I have been positively DROOLING over these!
Off to look at your website. I hope you have H. serrata 'Akishino Temari', and/or H. serrata 'chiri-san Sue'. I tried to get these two right after Heronswood closed, but they didn't have them anymore.
Edited to put in my 'must have' hydrangeas.
This message was edited Jul 7, 2006 8:31 PM
