Episode 43: My Blue Hydrangeas Aren’t Blooming

About This Episode

In this week’s episode of Ask Grumpy, Steve Bender, also known as Southern Living’s Grumpy Gardener, answers a reader’s question on their blue hydrangeas.Plus, Grumpy’s Gripe of the week.

Question Of The Week

My mother lives in northeast Georgia and her blue hydrangeas didn't bloom this year. She wonders if you know why.

Grumpy Gardener Answer: Yes, Grumpy knows all. Okay. Now there's only two types of hydrangeas that get blue flowers, and that is the big-leaf hydrangea, sometimes called the French hydrangea, and its botanical name is hydrangea macrophylla. The other type is a species called mountain hydrangea, and its botanical name is hydrangea serrata. Those are the only ones that have blue flowers, and the only ones that you can change the color according to the pH of the soil. Now, if you say that they didn't bloom this spring or this summer, this leads me to believe that you've got one of the older varieties of these hydrangeas. The older ones basically bloom on buds and growth that was made the previous year, like in the fall. Two things could have happened. One, you could have had a really serious freeze come through in the winter or early spring, and because the flower buds aren't as hardy as leaf buds, it will kill all the flower buds, and you won't get any flowers. The other thing that could have happened is, because they form all their flower buds on the old growth, if after those buds are set you go and prune them as everybody loves to do. If you prune them in the fall, and you prune them in winter or in early spring, you cut off all the flowerbuds, and they don't bloom that year.

My solution is going to help you get around both of those situations. Now they have hydrangeas that are called rebloomers, and they form flower buds on both the old growth and the new growth. So if you have a really terrible winter, your hydrangeas can get frozen to the ground, killed to the ground. And come spring, they'll shoot right back up again and bloom. I know it's happened in my garden. And probably the best known of these rebloomers are the endless summer types, but there are lots and lots of different types of these things out there. So, if it gets killed to the ground, it'll still bloom. If you happen to mistakenly prune it at the wrong time and cut off all the flower buds, in the winter or the spring, it'll still send out more growth, and you'll still get more flowers. So, what I would say is when you're out researching a hydrangea for your garden, and you want to make sure that it blooms even if you have a terrible winter or you do something stupid, what you do is you ask the person at the garden center, "Is this a reblooming type?" Almost all the hydrangeas of the blue and the color-changing type that are out there for sale now are rebloomers.

Gripe Of The Week

Fragrant Flowers That Aren't

When I'm reading a description of a plant, and it's something they're trying to get me excited about... It has beautiful flowers and foliage, and a lot of times, they'll describe the flowers as fragrant flowers. Well, who wouldn't want that? That's an extra bonus that you get with your flowers, right? But what I find is that, so often, flowers that are described as fragrant, aren't. I mean, you'd have to stick the whole flower up your nose. You know, like lilies and magnolias and gardenias and bearded iris and stuff like that. Flowers that have this teeny little scent that could probably only be noticed by a small little fly. Fragrant is if you can smell it six feet away, or eight feet away, or a yard away. Those are fragrant flowers. So stop mislabeling them. Stop misleading the public. That's cheating.

About Ask Grumpy

Ask Grumpy is a podcast featuring Steve Bender, also known as Southern Living’s Grumpy Gardener. For more than 20 years, Grumpy has been sharing advice on what to grow, when to plant, and how to manage just about anything in your garden. Tune in for short episodes every Wednesday and Saturday as Grumpy answers reader questions, solves seasonal conundrums, and provides need-to-know advice for gardeners with his very Grumpy sense of humor. Be sure to follow Ask Grumpy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen so you don't miss an episode.

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.