Photo 1: Yes, newhomeowner2011a, you can remove the blooms from last year.

Photo 2: As for which hydrangea this one is, I think the blooms are too far away to tell. Limelight is known to produce greenish blooms that eventually turn white but a few others will do similarly for shorter periods of time. The size of the blooms could be that they are just recently opening now; not sure.

Can you post another picture that more clearly shows the blooms (a close up? as best as you can with your camera?). Maybe someone will be able to tell from that picture.

In your zone, many people have arborescens and paniculatas. A few oakleafs will do well closer to Zone 4b-ish. And some people have been able to grow macrophyllas that rebloom (their stems normally dry out during winter in very cold regions but new stems grow from the ground and develop blooms from these).

By the way, enjoy the hammock!!!!!!!!!! I have one like yours too but the wood pieces broke last Fall and now need to replace them. Grrrr.

Luis

Here are some more pics -

Also, I'm thinking about transplanting - would have to wait until late fall/winter if I don't want to stress/kill the hydrangeas, correct?

We just removed the timbers beneath it with hopes of flattening the box - do I need to treat like a transplant if I want to save the plant (remove it and then flatten soil before replanting)?

Remove the blooms - do I simply cut off the blooms or do it w/ my hand (knock them off)? I think I read the later somewhere so wanted to clarify (if it really makes a difference...) :-)

Looks like an H. serrata such as 'Grayswood'. They are from Asia and are commonly referred to as mountain hydrangea. They just about all have lacecap flower heads and lanky stems.

It also looks like an arborescens ssp. radiata, but they don't have serrated leaf edges.

Is this as big as the flowers will grow or if I move it to get more sun will the flowers get any bigger?

Those flowers are called lacecaps because they contain tons of small florets with a few larger flowers around the edges. To get the actual flowers any bigger is not possible. You may want to look into a mophead variety (which have much bigger flowers) but if you want a shrub the size of yours you'd be looking at $100-200 and a crew to haul it in.

There are tricks you can use to get more flower heads to appear, but the size of the flowers will get no larger than what you already have. The shrub appears fully mature and it will also not grow much larger.

That is very helpful - thank you for the information.

Is it too late in the season to transplant it? Is it too mature to transplant or is that still possible, but I will have to wait until the late fall/early winter?

Some more info and a correction...

Upon closer inspection, this is surely a hydrangea arborescens subspecies radiata (not a serrata), could be one of several variants.

They spread via runners, and because of this, they get much wider than they do tall. They are native to the midwest, east of the Mississippi. Also, they bloom on new wood so you can prune them back almost to the ground each year and they will grow back to nearly 4' tall and bloom. The flowers will always be white; the pH of the soil cannot change the color.

The good news is you can transplant this in as many sections as you want, just use a spade and punch a line around a bunch stems with 12-18" deep of the root ball attached to them. You can do this in the Fall or early Spring, other times aren't recommended. With a shrub the size of yours, you can make up to a dozen new plants out of it, and site them anywhere you want or give some parts away or sell them! They can take full sun as long as you water them regularly.