You may have hit on it John. I have very limited experience with hydrangas, however the place I've seen them at their most beautiful was at my old bosses house on the lake. His house is waterfront and he has a yard FULL of them. All are under a canopy of all the huge trees on his lot. His hostas also went wild. Now he had no irrigation system and is in Meck. county so he is under similar water restrictions. Last summer they were outstanding!! So much so, he offered to all of us at the office both Hydranga and Hosta if we would just come and supply the labor to divide what we wanted. Believe me, I would take him up on it is a second if I had a good place for the plants! :-) My guess is the deep roots of the trees were pulling from the moisture supplied in the ground by being on the lake thus allowing rainfall to supply more for the more shallow rooted plants.

I'd say you have dry shade. I have the same problem here. I'm going with plants that can tolerate dry shade and adding lots of compost and mulch. Heucheras can tolerate dry shade and also lenten rose kind of like it dry. The thing is though, the the roots from the trees will come up for your water and compost too so it's always a struggle. Good luck.. I think we both could use a bit of luck trying to garden in dry shade.

I have a mostly wooded lot. All the neighbors (non gardeners) are also wooded. So even if I cut down trees I would need them to cut some down also in order to get full sun. There are places on my property that nothing grows, not even poison ivy or stilt grass. I should have paid attention to this fact when I planted tons of hostas and hellebores and various other shade tolerant plants. Live and learn. Years ago I had a dozen or so mature oaks and tulip poplars cut down, that made enough room for a veggie garden but now that a few years have passed the edge trees are spreading their canopy out over the open spot.

The only thing I can get to grow well at the foot of the trees is Hedera helix or English Ivy - which is a big no no plant, invasive wise. I don't have to plant it, it just pops up throughout the edge of the woods. There is too much of it to pull up so what I do is trim it from tree trunks so that it never gets tall enough to bloom. A trick I've used in the past is to take large plastic pots of rich potting media and plant fast growing tropicals - Wandering Jew, Swedish Ivy, Syngonium, etc. I sink the pot into the ground and the vines creep out and cover about 5 feet in all directions. They won't survive winter but they make decent houseplants.

I haven't seen decent rain in a month. In this weather you have to water every day and potted plants often need it twice just to stay alive. If you're not going to water, I doubt anything will thrive there.

We have dry shade and I have lots of hydrangeas and azaleas planted under a hackberry tree. The roots of the tree take up all the moisture. The plants wilt like crazy.

trianglejohn - sinking the pots is a really good idea. I haven't tried that in my shade but I put my black magic ee and la black gamecock iris in buckets with no drain holes and planted the buckets. Now these two, that I could never give enough water to make them happy, are finally content. The iris is thriving and the ee at least looks pleasant - still not black and still slooooowly growing. It doesn't wilt anymore.

I finally got out there and watered. Everything was horrible looking. Even some of the flowering trees in the yard. Just stinks! We can never get even moisture...ugh. Things look revived. Thanks for all the help again.