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How a single plant became a garden — the varieties worth knowing, how to multiply them for free, and the trick to turning them blue.
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I wrote once about the first hydrangea of the season — the one from our wedding, the one that opens every July around our anniversary. This is the other half of that story: how one plant became a whole garden, slowly, and how you can do the same.
It started with a single Nikko Blue — all we could afford our first summer in this house — and I divided it, and divided it again, until one plant became a whole run of them. The reblooming ones I did differently: I bought a batch of Endless Summer BloomStruck all at once, tiny little plants, and simply waited. This is their fourth summer, and each one is easily four feet across now — last year they’d grown clear over the windows, so I cut them back hard, and because the rebloomers set flowers on new growth too, they came right back and bloomed anyway. (Do that to an old-fashioned mophead and you’d lose the whole season — but more on knowing the difference in a minute.) There are all kinds of ways to make a garden — from seed, from full-grown plants brought in all at once with a plan from the start, from a neighbor’s cast-off divisions pressed into your hands. But the two that built mine, both on a budget, were these: multiply what you already have, and buy small and let time do the rest. Neither costs much. Both just take patience.
Here is what I’ve learned.
Know your hydrangea
Not all hydrangeas are the same plant, and it matters — mostly because of when they bloom and whether you can change their color.
- The old-fashioned mopheads — my Nikko Blue — are bigleaf hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla). They bloom on old wood — last year’s stems — so they flower once, gloriously, in early summer, and you never prune them hard in spring or you’ll cut off the whole show. And it isn’t only the shears that can cost you: because they flower on old wood, a hard winter can too. A blizzard this year snapped so many of my mopheads’ old stems that this summer’s show was a quiet one — fewer blooms, simply because the wood they flower from didn’t all make it through. But they’re patient things, and they always come back; I’ve no doubt next year they’ll be spectacular again. These, too, are the ones whose color you can actually change.
- The reblooming kind — Endless Summer — are also bigleaf (Hydrangea macrophylla, the same species as the Nikko), but bred to flower on both old and new wood, so they keep going all season — and because of that, you can cut them back hard when they outgrow their spot without sacrificing the year’s flowers. If you plant only one type, plant these: they’re forgiving, they rebloom, and their color shifts too.
- The panicle types — Limelight and its cousins (Hydrangea paniculata) — are a different animal. They bloom on new wood, later in the season, in cones of white that age to pink and green. They take more sun, they’re nearly indestructible, and their color does not change with your soil. Mine are just opening now, in late July.
- The big white snowballs — Annabelle, the sturdier Incrediball, and the newest of them, Incrediball Storm Proof (bred with stems strong enough to hold those heavy white heads upright through a downpour — the older ones flop, which is the whole point of the upgrade) — are smooth hydrangeas (Hydrangea arborescens), and new to my garden this year — my first of the smooth kind. They bloom on new wood, so you can cut them to the ground each spring and they come roaring back, white and unbothered by whatever your soil is doing.
Knowing which is which tells you when to expect flowers, when (and whether) to prune, and whether you can chase that blue.
Hydrangeas give back far more than they ask of you.
How to propagate hydrangeas
One honest note before you start snipping: many of the newer, named hydrangeas are patented, and it isn’t legal to propagate a patented variety — even just for yourself — while the patent is still in force. The easiest way to check is the plant tag: look for a “PP” number or wording like “asexual propagation prohibited,” or scan the QR code many tags now carry — it takes you right to the grower’s page. If the tag is long gone, a quick web search of the variety name plus “plant patent” (say, Incrediball hydrangea plant patent) will usually turn it up, and the official record lives in the USPTO’s Patent Public Search. Older, off-patent varieties are fair game — the ones I multiply here, my Nikko Blue and my Limelight, are free to your heart’s content. And if you fall for one of the patented ones, don’t feel cheated: just buy a few more small plants. Little quart starts fill in far faster than you’d think, and in a season or two you’d never know they hadn’t come from cuttings.
This is the part I love, because it’s how a garden gets big without getting expensive. There are three ways in — I’ll go easiest first.
Layering — the no-risk way. If a plant has a low, flexible branch that can reach the ground, this is the most foolproof method there is. Bend that stem down to the soil, nick the underside lightly where it touches, pin it flat with a garden clip or landscape pin, and mound a little dirt over the spot. It stays attached to the mother plant the whole time — drawing on her while it quietly grows its own roots where it’s pinned. In a few months you snip it free, dig it up, and you have a whole new plant that never had a chance to fail. If you’re nervous, start here.
Cuttings — a stem into a plant. In late July into early August I take 6-inch cuttings of soft new growth with no flower on it — the kind of stem that bends and snaps rather than just folding. Strip the lower leaves and cut just below a leaf node. From there, two ways:
- The simplest: set them in a jar of water on a bright sill, out of direct sun, and change the water every few days. It’s the easiest to love because you get to watch the roots come — though it takes a few weeks, and a water-rooted cutting needs a gentle move into soil once it’s ready. This is exactly what I have going right now — a sill full of cuttings from my Nikko and my Limelight, both old enough to be fair game.
- The more reliable: dip the cut end in a little rooting hormone, set it two nodes deep in a small pot of well-draining potting mix, and give it a makeshift greenhouse — a clear storage bin with the lid on for a whole batch, or a zip-top bag over a single pot. Out of direct sun and lightly moist, it holds its own humidity while it roots. A gentle tug that meets resistance, after a couple of weeks, means it’s taken.
Whichever way, I baby the rooted ones along in a sheltered spot and plant them out in early September — early enough to settle and root in before the cold.
Dividing — one plant into several. An established mophead that’s outgrown its spot can be dug up in early spring or fall, split into sections with a sharp spade (each with roots and a few stems), and replanted. That’s how my one Nikko became ten. It isn’t delicate work; hydrangeas are tougher than they look.
That’s what I’m doing this summer — layering a few low branches and rooting a sill full of cuttings from my older varieties. I also just brought home five small Incrediball Storm Proof to plant out a new stretch of border — that one’s patented, so it’s a buy-don’t-propagate, and I’ll simply add more of them over the next few years until the row fills in.
One plant becomes ten. Cuttings the length of your hand become a full border.
Blue or pink? It’s the soil, not the plant
The thing everyone asks: how do you get that blue? It isn’t the variety — it’s the dirt.
Only the bigleaf types (the Nikko, the Endless Summer) can change color; the panicles and the white ones stay as they are no matter what you do. For the ones that can shift, it comes down to soil pH and aluminum. Acidic soil frees up aluminum, and the flowers turn blue; sweeter, more alkaline soil locks it away, and they turn pink. To push mine bluer, I work a soil acidifier into the ground around the base each season, following the label. To go the other way, toward pink, you’d add garden lime. A cheap soil pH tester takes the guessing out of it.
Just know it’s slow: a full color change can take the better part of a year. A patient gardener’s trick, not a weekend one — which, by now, you’ll know is rather the theme.
The long way
That’s the whole secret, if there is one: hydrangeas give back far more than they ask of you. One plant becomes ten. A cutting the length of your hand becomes a border. Everything I have came from a little dividing, a little rooting, and a great deal of waiting — and there’s something steadying about planting a cutting in July that you won’t see bloom until you’ve half forgotten it.
I’ve just brought home five small Incrediball Storm Proof to begin a new stretch of border. For now they’ll sit in a shady corner where I can keep a close eye on them, and I’ll plant them out in early September, once the worst of the heat has passed — then add more each year, always in odd numbers, a three here and a five there, the way an uneven border reads easiest to the eye, until the row fills in. In a few years there will be a row where there’s only lawn now. That’s the part I’ve come to love most — not the flowers I have, but the ones I’m still growing and dreaming of.
Grow along with me: Pruners | Garden clips / landscape pins | Rooting hormone | Small pots | Potting mix | Clear storage bin | Soil Acidifier (for blue) | Garden lime (for pink) | Soil pH tester
The Sources
- Pruners / garden snips
- Garden clips / landscape pins (for layering)
- Rooting hormone
- Small nursery pots
- Well-draining potting mix
- Clear plastic storage bin (the makeshift greenhouse)
- Soil acidifier (to turn them blue)
- Garden lime (to turn them pink)
- The plants themselves: Nikko Blue · Endless Summer · Limelight · Incrediball — (original) · Incrediball Storm Proof
- Soil pH tester
Insider
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