Heritage Hydrangeas

Riven means split asunder or torn apart. Hydrangea arborescens ‘Riven Lace’ certainly lives up to its name. With highly serrated leaves and straggly growth, this untidy plant must be the ‘Ugly Duckling’ of the hydrangea world. With some t.l.c., good horticultural husbandry and my limited knowledge of hydrangeas, I hope to turn this disaster into a thing of beauty by next summer. Fortunately, being of the H. arborescens species, I can prune it heavily in the autumn and look forward to clean, new growth in the spring. See it on my website, www.heritagehydrangeas.com, and follow its progress.

Riven means split asunder or torn apart. Hydrangea arborescens ‘Riven Lace’ certainly lives up to its name. With highly serrated leaves and straggly growth, this untidy plant must be the ‘Ugly Duckling’ of the hydrangea world. With some t.l.c., good horticultural husbandry and my limited knowledge of hydrangeas, I hope to turn this disaster into a thing of beauty by next summer. Fortunately, being of the H. arborescens species, I can prune it heavily in the autumn and look forward to clean, new growth in the spring. See it on my website, www.heritagehydrangeas.com, and follow its progress.

We have had a great summer (2019) settling into out new home in Burnaby, BC, Canada. Getting the new hydrangea garden organised is a somewhat slower process but at least we have acquired 40 new (new to us) hydrangea cultivars to get started. This brings the total of hydrangeas displayed in our cyberspace garden (www.heritagehydrangeas.com) to 160, all of which we have grown, photographed and researched ourselves. I hope you enjoy our collection. I am told it is very useful for plant I.D. Here are photos of three of our new ones. Go to our website for a closer look.

We have now expanded the ‘Hydrangea Gardens of the World’ page on our website, htpps://www.heritagehydrangeas.com You can find this page under Learning > Hydrangea Gardens of the World. Hydrangea nerds please note: It now features eleven great hydrangea gardens all well worth visiting! We welcome any corrections, amendments or additions to this page. Please email me at [email protected] As the leaf buds on my hydrangeas start to break into leaf, I am looking forward to another great hydrangea season.

We have had a great summer (2019) settling into out new home in Burnaby, BC, Canada. Getting the new hydrangea garden organised is a somewhat slower process but at least we have acquired 40 new (new to us) hydrangea cultivars to get started. This brings the total of hydrangeas displayed in our cyberspace garden (www.heritagehydrangeas.com) to 160, all of which we have grown, photographed and researched ourselves. I hope you enjoy our collection. I am told it is very useful for plant I.D. Here are photos of three of our new ones. Go to our website for a closer look.

We have double-checked, scrutinized and researched the names of every hydrangea species, variety, cultivar and forma that appear in our website, www.heritagehydrangeas.com. There are 135 hydrangeas featured. Every trademark, PBR (Plant Breeders Rights) and patent has also been verified. Hopefully our website is now error-free. There are still some anomalies as all the world’s hydrangea experts, botanists and taxonomists do not agree. Please email me if you find any errors.

The content of our online hydrangea encyclopedia, https://www.heritagehydrangeas.com, has been growing in recent years, so we start 2019 with a new design. We hope it will help you find all the information you require.

We have now expanded the ‘Hydrangea Gardens of the World’ page on our website, htpps://www.heritagehydrangeas.com You can find this page under Learning > Hydrangea Gardens of the World. Hydrangea nerds please note: It now features eleven great hydrangea gardens all well worth visiting! We welcome any corrections, amendments or additions to this page. Please email me at [email protected] As the leaf buds on my hydrangeas start to break into leaf, I am looking forward to another great hydrangea season.

As this is the season for it, I have updated and improved the propagation page on my hydrangeas website. Go to http://www.heritagehydrangeas.com/hydrangea-propagation/ to learn all about it. All constructive criticism and feedback welcome!

Moving premises has created an unfortunate hiatus for the Heritage Hydrangeas project. The good news is that the website, www.heritagehydrangeas.com continues to provide valuable information. I have recently updated the Hydrangea Plant Names Index page. I have also brought the Hydrangeaceae, The Taxonomy of Hydrangeas page up-to-date in accordance with the major taxonomical authorities. The authorities I follow include: The Royal Botanical Gardens Kew, The Missouri Botanic Garden and, of course, the RHS Plantfinder. Confusingly, these authorities don’t always agree with each other, but I hope my website pages reflect the latest consensus.

My wife and I visited Cape Cod for the week of 7th-15th July, 2017, for the 3rd Annual Cape Cod Hydrangea Festival. It started well on 7th july with a Hydrangea University event where Peg Black gave a presentation "The Evolution of a Cape Cod Garden"; Joan Harrison - author of two hydrangea books - enlightened us with the "Colourful World of Hydrangeas"; and Mal Condon gave an well-informed presentation "Hydrangea Success - it's more than just blue". This event, in collabora...tion with the Cape Cod Hydrangea Society, was held at the Heritage Museums & Gardens in Sandwich, MA. After the presentations we were encouraged to inspect the display gardens and the Hydrangea test garden where new varieties are being trialled. Note that there are ambitious plans to develop this into one of the great hydrangea gardens of the world! Well worth a visit in 2018 for all hydrangea enthusiasts. In the following days, we visited many open hydrangea gardens in the Cape Cod area. One was that of Mal and Mary Kay Condon - a 1.3 acre garden, started just 3 years ago when they moved from their Nantucket Island Hydrangea farm to mainland MA. This was of particular interest to me as we, too, are in the process of moving premises. It is possible that Mal Condon is an even bigger hydrangea nerd than myself, so lots of opportunity for endless hydrangea talk!

For the seven enthusiasts who regularly visit the Heritage Hydrangeas website, and follow us on social media, here is the latest news: We have added seventeen new hydrangeas to our website bringing the total to 135! The new additions include ‘Blauer Zwerg’, ‘Blauer Prinz’, ‘Blue Danube’, ‘Bodensee’, ‘Brestenberg’, ‘Brussels Lace’, ‘Burgundy Lace’, and many others. Why do they all start with the letter ‘B’? Well, in my efforts to increase the size of my collection I am obviously working my way through the alphabet only 24 more letters to go! We have updated some photos and data on many other pages. You can also find full cultivation, pruning and propagation information on hydrangeas on our website.

Following the mild winter and the warm, wet spring we have decided to move our Open Garden Day to catch all our hydrangeas at their blooming best. So, make a note of the date Saturday, June 11th, 2016, 10:00-4:30 and come and see an amazing display of 130 varieties of hydrangeas flowering their hearts out for your admiration. This may be the last Open Garden Day to be held at Heritage Hydrangeas; don’t miss it!