Usually when I plant something new I have to baby it for the first season with regular watering. These guys have been very low maintenance, they never wilt and do ok even if I'm a day or two late to water them. From my experience, that's pretty good behavior for a hydrangea.
You can see two of the three in this picture...they are still small but doing well.
The picture below was taken May 16th right after they were planted. It's cool to see how everything has changed since then.
And now they are getting ready to bloom like crazy. This makes me so happy!
One of the plants gets a bit of shade from the River Birch and it's doing just as well. It was smaller than the other two to start with.
By next year they should reach the floor of the porch...you can see just a peek of them through the purple cone flowers above.
I was so inspired by the Little Limes that I planted three Limelight hydrangeas along the newly built back deck. They are the grown up version of the Little Limes. We didn't have anything planted here before and the last couple years we knew the old deck was about done so we waited.
These will get quite large and blend together to form a hedge since I planted them close together. They are pretty leggy now but should look better after I cut them back in the spring.
My vision is for them to be huge and overflowing with blooms like this picture...
and this one...
and one more just for fun.
The last three pictures are from Deborah Silver
If they do as well as I hope, in a couple years we will be enjoying massive flowers from the yard and from the deck. Any Limelight lovers out there?
Joining Censational Girl's garden link party here.