Hydrangeas are great prairie bloomers
Hardy shrub tolerates harsh Prairie winters
Limelight is the perfect name for this hydrangea. With its spectacular midsummer display of huge flowers, limelight certainly enjoys the centre stage and is one of the premier summer-flowering shrubs in our region.
Limelight f lowers are somewhat conical-shaped and have a lovely lime-green tinge when young, maturing to white during July and then occasionally developing a pink tinge by August. It can be expected to grow to about one metre tall here.
HISTORY
Dutch plant breeder Peter Zwijnenburg created limelight by crossbreeding four different hydrangea varieties and then selecting the best one from among the couple of hundred offspring. Limelight has been in Canada for about 10 years and has proven to be not only a beautiful shrub, but also a hardy plant.
BEST FEATURES
Its flower heads are truly glorious and are easily limelight’s best feature. Yet, strangely enough, the showy hydrangea flowers aren’t really flowers in the true botanical sense. If you look closely at the ‘flowers,’ you might notice that they lack any reproductive floral parts and, instead, are sterile floral parts called sepals. The true flowers are inconspicuous and hidden in the sepal-dominated flower heads.
The reason that these large, showy sepals exist at all is simply to catch the eye of pollinating insects that will be attracted to the ‘fake’ flowers and eventually pollinate the real flowers. Granted, plant breeders have selected hydrangeas that have a disproportionately high ratio of sepals to petals than one would find in nature, but I’m sure few gardeners are complaining.
DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: INTERMEDIATE
Hydrangeas are not tough to grow, but they do require some pruning for the best floral display. Many hydrangea varieties will only produce flowers on last year’s growth, which means that the cold-sensitive flower buds often die during the winter. Limelight develops flowers on new wood during the summer, so winter cold is no threat to a great floral display.
Hydrangeas, in general, grow just fine in full sunlight, but I’ve always found that the biggest flowers and widest leaves are produced on plants that have some protection from hot afternoon sun. Morning plus a bit of early afternoon sunlight — say until about 1 p.m. — is ideal.
Keep in mind that all hydrangeas enjoy moist, rich soil, so don’t skip the soil preparation prior to planting. I like to add about five centimetres of Sea-soil — a composted fish-waste and pine-bark blend — to the garden soil and till it in. The Sea-soil-enriched garden soil produces fabulously robust hydrangeas.
HOW PERFECT IS IT?
Limelight is truly a spectacu la r, P ra i rie-ha rdy, flowering shrub not prone to pests.
As its na me i mplies, limelight truly is a great performer. To keep abreast of what ’s new in the gardening world , follow facebook.com/ Holes Green houses. For previous columns b y Jim Hol e , go to edmontonjournal.com/hole