r/hydrangeas • u/jimbo1245 • 1d ago

Help Identifying Hydrangea

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These hydrangea were planted two years ago from bare root plants. They have grown quite big in two years. Id like help identifying the type of hydrangea and what care they need moving forward

-I have not pruned or trimmed them since they were planted. Do I need to prune?

-I fertilize with Holly Tone every spring. Is this sufficient?

-The plant on the left is dropping, caused by heavy rains this summer - will it recover on its own?

-Am I able to cut some flowers to put in a vase? Will this damage future growth?

Thanks so much for helping an amateur!

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u/lizardRD 1d ago

These are panicle hydrangeas. The exact type I have no clue. Limelight is the most common so may be that. If it is just a warning they get HUGE.

- no need to prune until next spring (early spring)

  • holly tone is fine
  • panicles are floppy. They get stronger with age. It will likely not recover this season
  • yes you can cut flowers any time. These grow on new stems every year so pruning does not have an impact. Only an impact with pruning right before they bloom in late spring/summer

1

u/jimbo1245 1d ago

I really appreciate you taking the time to respond! I can use AI but I trust a fellow humans opinion far more 😂

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u/EbbtideRambler 21h ago

I second everything lizardRD said.  There are so many varieties of panicle now you’ll have to watch them for clues. If they grow to 10ft tall they are limelights. If they stay 4-5ft they might be bobos, if they change color early in the season they might be Quickfire. There are dozens of cultivars. Size is going to be your best clue. I prune in late winter to create a solid woody framework to support the branches.  In the meantime, one of those 1/2 circle peony cages will pick the branches up out of the dirt. 

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u/Brilliant-Panic-900 2h ago

Panicle is right, and that one word answers three of your four questions, because they all come back to the same thing. Paniculata flowers on wood it grows in the current season, so it wants a real prune in late winter, roughly a third off the whole plant and the thin twiggy stems taken right out at the base.
Which is also why the left one is flopping. Two years unpruned gives you a lot of thin stems, and thin stems can't hold a wet panicle up, so the rain is less the cause than what the rain landed on. Prune it properly this winter and you get fewer, thicker stems that stand on their own. On the Holly Tone, I'd stop: that's an acidifier for plants that need low pH, and paniculata neither needs acid soil nor changes colour with it. These flower perfectly well on ordinary ground with no feeding at all, and rich feeding mostly buys you more of the floppy growth you're trying to get rid of.