It is my pleasure to introduce you today to Julie Singer, Horticulturist and Master Gardener at the Cincinnati Horticultural Society and for today guest blogger at Beyond Blossoms. Here is her take on hydrangea flowers.

There are two basic types of hydrangea, which are garden and greenhouse. Garden hydrangeas are hardy and can be grown outdoors in the ground and in containers. Greenhouse hydrangeas are typically grown for the gift market and are sold in floral shops and grocery stores.

Greenhouse hydrangeas are prized plants to display in temporary show gardens. They are grown to produce blooms quickly, often with spectacular results. You should never expect these plants to live forever, but it is possible to transplant them outdoors for future enjoyment. Plant in a protected area and they might possibly survive. It can be your own garden experiment!

”Antony and Cleopatra: All Consuming Love” by Maeve Schulz at the 2007 Cincinnati Flower Show. Blue hydrangeas were used to symbolize the Nile. The richness of color increased color spectrum for the exhibit. During the after show sale, hydrangeas were the first to be sold out.

Among the garden hydrangeas, Oakleaf, PeeGee, and ‘Annabelle’ grow best in a range of climates. Oakleaf is an upright shrub growing to 8’ tall with glorious exfoliating bark. The leaves resemble oak leaves (hence the name), and the flowers are panicle shaped and quite showy. Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’ has glorious ball shaped flowers that look fantastic grown in mass. This variety of hydrangea is also a good choice if you plan to dry the flowers for wreath making or crafts. PeeGee is considered a tree form hydrangea with white, cone-shaped flowers that develop a blush as they age.

”Beyond the Gate” by Merkle Landscape. Changing color hydrangeas that give the volume to the garden. 2007 Cincinnati Flower Show.

One of the most frequently asked questions about hydrangeas is how to change the flower color. It is easier to change a pink bloomer to blue than it is to change blue to pink. To gain the blue color, add aluminum sulfate to the soil throughout the growing season. Follow directions carefully because over application can damage your plant. Changing a hydrangea from blue to pink can be difficult. You must try to lower the aluminum in the soil. Something easy to try is to fertilize the plant with a fertilizer that has a high phosphorous ratio (middle number). This will help raise the pH, restricting the plant from taking up aluminum in the soil. Another good way to achieve the color you want is to grow hydrangeas in containers. This will give you more control of the soil.

There are so many varieties of hydrangeas on the market, with new varieties being introduced yearly. They are glorious plants with uses beyond the landscape. They are fun to grow and very addictive!

Even though I call it our “flower encyclopedia”, I do not want to focus on flowers and flowering plants only. Therefore, and because I have forever been amazed by them, I would like to introduce you today to Ginkgo trees. They are also called living fossils in that they are the same species as discovered in fossil records and have no close living relatives. They basically survived major extinction events throughout their existence and did not adapt in any way or form new species. This means that the Ginkgo is a creation so perfect from the start that it did not have to go down the road of evolution in order to survive.

Not only do the oldest fossil records of Ginkgos date back 270 million years, but the individual trees can also have a lifetime of hundreds of years. The oldest existing one is said to be 3000 years old. So, what is their secret?

The tree is deep rooted and thus resistant to damage from wind and snow. Ginkgos feature insect-resistant wood and are also not susceptible to diseases. That and the fact that they have the ability to develop aerial roots make them very robust.

As ferns, Ginkgos do not have flowers to take care of their reproduction but motile sperm . They have separate sexes with some trees being male and some being female. The male trees bear cones the female trees seeds.

There are so many more amazing facts around Ginkgos, but unfortunately I cannot cover them all in this post.

Wishing you a nice week!

… my absolute favorite! It is quite interesting what comes up when you search for lotus flowers on Google. Besides Lotus Notes, the program you might have struggled with in the mid- 90’s, to Lotus Cars, those British sports cars, which some people might find attractive and in between articles about the meaning of the lotus flower in religions and different nations, I finally came accross several websites and articles on just lotus flowers.

As you might know the lotus flower is nothing but a water lily, and yet a very special kind. The “true” lotus flowers at night and closes its buds in the morning. The plant is rooted in soil under water, with leaves and flowers floating on the water surface. The leaves are usually round with a radial cut. Some species however have perfectly round leaves such as Victoria. Victoria Amazonica, or the giant water lily, can develop leaves of up to 9 feet in diameter. The first night its flowers open, they are white, the second night they are pink. The open flower can be up to 16 inches in daimeter.

The lotus flower played an important role in ancient Egypt. You must know that the white Egyptian lotus sinks below the water overnight and reappears and blooms with the first sun rays the next morning. This is why the old Egyptians admired the lotus flower as a symbol of the sun, of creation and rebirth. According to Egyptian mythology, before the existance of the universe there was an infinite ocean of water out of which a lotus flower emerged. When the lotus opened its first flower, Atum stepped out, the self-created sun god.

Unfortunately, lotus flowers when cut don’t last very long. We’ll just have to enjoy this beauty of nature in its original habitat. The North-American water lilies bloom from June through September. Watch out for them on your next nature hike through the woods.