THE HYDRANGEA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 January 1941, Page 9

THE HYDRANGEA

VALUABLE PLANT IN GARDEN. The garden hydrangea is a very popular hardy shrub throughout the Dominion, and coming into Hower as it does in summer and autumn, it is most valuable for providing colour in the garden after most of the hardy shrubs arc over. It will grow in any kind of soil and in practically any position, but it prefers a deep, moist loam, well enriched with manure or garden refuse of some kind. It will grow in full sun, but the more delicate colours are better when grown in semi-shade, and they form a very tine undergrowth for spring (lowering trees such as the various varieties of apples, plums and cherries. They are very effective as lawn specimens, and when mussed be-

side a pond or a stream. The type bears a fertile as well as sterile flowers, the former being small and blue with sepals, petals, stemans and seed vessels, but the sterile ones consist simply of enlarged sepals with some remnants of petals in the centre. The varieties grown in gardens have only sterile flowers. The corymbs or flower heads are terminal and are borne on the young wood like roses, and they vary in size according to the variety and the character of the feeding and cultivation.

They make very useful pot and tub plants for providing a display in the greenhouse in early summer before they flower in the open, ami when the young shoots are rooted in heat in early spring and grown on steadily, they make nice plants to flower in six-inch pots with one stem, the following season. Those who have no heat can root half-ripened wood in summer 'ftr early autumn in a shady frame and the young ripened wood will root if put in along with the hardwood cuttings in the autumn. The modern varieties, which are legion am! are constantly being added to, are either pink <>:• some '-h,.d<- >»f pink in some .soils and in others the same varieties are blue . r some shade of blue. It is popularly believed that tin acidc soil rich m organic matter, will produce blues, and an alkaline soil ;iinks, or some reddish diodes The e colours can be modified by adding a blueing pwli-r <>r watering with weak solutions of alum but the. trvatmvn' has to begin as soon as the rutting', are potted up. and curihmivd right through all the. stages of growth In the upon it should begin durmg tin winter and be rOntimwd uniil tieflowers are developed. To turn ■lo-.vi-r pink which are normally blur that s growing in blueing soil, application l . .<f 1 lime can tic given, and these, t 0... should begm in, the 'winter. liitvwoty > of colour can be produced by ar. mwo- i ;dphal watering with .> weak solution

of sulphate of iron, or by dusting thej powder round the plants. Hydrangeas are greedy plants, and a good mulching of stable manure or loafmould or lawn mowings will help to retain moistureand to feed the plants during dry weather.

Pruning is rather a problem for some growers, and the safest way is not to cut back at ail until the plants become too large, but to thin out the weaker shoots during the winter, and when cutting the (lowers to cut with a long stem. If pruned hard back in the winter they will make good growth, but should the summer and autumn be a cold wot one there is a danger that they will not (lower. In a season like the present there is no danger, and in Masterton most of the flower heads have already formed.