Bigleaf Hydrangea, French Hydrangea 'Homigo'

I bought this two years ago at our local Meijer store. It sounded different so I thought I would give it a try. I'm glad I did. It has re...Read Moreally filled in nicely and the blooms this year are profuse. I am definitely going back for more as this is a showstopper in my yard.

I was walking through a nursery passing by the hydrangea not expecting anything out of the ordinary beside the normal Nikko Blue which ha...Read Mores not shown to bloom here in central Illinois. I passed by this big flower im not accustomed to seeing. It said on the tag Homigo. I looked at plant closely to inspect and noticed that it had pretty much been all new wood with the biggest flower appearing to be coming directly out of the soil. I purchased the plant but thinking that maybe it could flower here but the next year provided nothing. So as Endless Summer became more available I decided to dig up the Homigo and replace it but upon my digging I noticed that there was one flower bud, thinking this was just a small thing It wasnt worth my while still keeping it so I dug it out. After digging it out I noticed I broke a branch and it too had a flower bud. So maybe this one is a bit tougher than I thought. I dont beleive that much of the old wood survived beyond the first few buds of each branch but the plant is too thick for me to tell if it was old or new that it was blooming on. There is a possibility that this one can bloom on new wood. Even if it isnt it does make a good shrub to try on that off chance of flowers. The flowers are much different than other macrophyllas, they arrange themselves in a more flat manner than most.

I apologize if I use any incorrect terms, I am a beginning gardener. I live in Manassas, Virginia, USA, very close to Washington D.C.
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I bought a "Homigo" hydrangea from Springhill Nurseries last year (I just called them literally 5 minutes ago, and they no longer carry it), with the intention that it should become a focal point in the rather small yard of my townhome. The yard is shaded in the morning (as the townhouse faces north) and gets fairly strong afternoon sun.

When it arrived it had just one bloom, and I planted it in a container. It did very well there by my doorstep. The foliage is green, a slightly toothy oval shape, and it developed a very pretty bronze tinge all along the edge of the leaves -- not black/burnt, it seems to be a normal coloration of the plant. The bronze darkened as the air grew colder. I did not notice any of the color changes in the bloom I was expecting to see -- the bloom is supposed to change color through the season even if the pH doesn't -- but all in all I was quite satisfied.

I am currently working in a home improvement store, and when fall approached, I asked the department head of outside garden what to do about my hydrangea. She told me that if I left it in the container over the winter, it would die because the mass of the container would be too small to prevent freezing of the roots and stems and so forth. (We do get hard freezes and snows here.) She told me to plant it in the ground anywhere I could, and bury it in bark mulch. So, that's what I did. In very late autumn, I planted it, and then literally buried it in a mounded-up pile of pine bark mulch until only a few tiny stem tips showed. I did not cut off the single blossom.

A few weeks ago, I carefully pulled the mulch away with my fingers and clipped off the one dead bloom, and left it alone. There are now many strong baby leaves and/or leaf buds showing on all stems. Funny thing is, most of this new growth is at ground level, or very low down on the stems. Nothing lifelike at the tips of the stems yet. There are buds on the very stem tips, but I can't tell whether they are old and dead (that's what it looks like) or just haven't opened yet.

This is one of the Hovaria series (called Kaleidoscope in the US). According to Michael A. Dirr in Hydrangeas for American Gardens, "Alt...Read Morehough the flowers are magnificent, they lack of cold hardiness and/or high mildew susceptibility are garden liabilities."

I have scoured the internet trying to find a zone hardiness for these plants but have come up empty-handed (or empty-zoned). None of the sites that sell this plant list a zone range for it. Several have suggested that it be grown as a container plant. Even the Hovaria site (hovaria.com) does not list a zone hardiness for this plant, they simply say, "Most Hydrangeas are hardy. This means that the branches and the buds that still are not opened will not be killed by frostbite. It may happen (especially with container plants) that the soil in which the roots are, will totally freeze. When there is lasting, severe, bleak, drying, frosty cold weather (with much wind), the branches and buds can dry up because no supply of moisture from the roots will be possible. We can avoid this by covering the plants in a proper way during severe frost, for instance with bubble plastic..."

It would be nice to hear from other gardeners who have successfully overwintered this hydrangea, and during what conditions.