If you are willing to provide secure cold protection for your plants, any pink flowering bigleaf hydrangea should work for you. It seems that the hype surrounding reblooming hydrangea types lull folks in colder climates into believing they will reliably get blooms without any sort of winter protection. I think we have established this is not necessarily the case :-) The previous season's growth is typically destroyed by cold each winter and any new growth is slow to appear, often resulting in minimal flowering.

However if you were to provide some sort of secure winter protection - typically a wire cage surrounding the shrub that is then filled in with dried leaves, straw, or what have you - your chances both of successfully overwintering the plant AND getting good flowering is greatly increased.

Try reviewing this forum's archives on winter protection - you'll get a number of hits than explain various methods for you. The good news is that there are hydrangea growers in climates much like yours that practice this routinely with great success. (if you can dig far enough, you should find a long running thread authored by 'hayseedman' on overwintering hydrangeas)

Here is a link that might be useful: I found the link you need .... :-)

If you want another arborescens, you could try Invincibelle or Bella Anna. BA is said to have a richer pink. That said, no blooms would be as large as Incrediball's. Other H. macrophyllas would provide no further hardiness guarantee than Endless Summer in your area, and this excludes the fact that most can shift to blue in acidic soils.

I think you would have to winter protect it where you are but Glowing Embers is a stunning dark pink and has stiff stem that hold the flowers up. It doesn,t rebloom but I keep the flowers on well into winter because they go threw stunning color changes.

Thank you all for your advice. I looked around on the internet and then went to a fine nursery which had Bella Anna, which I tbought to be beautiful and more than I had hoped for. The Bella Annas were in large containers and were a bit expensive but an employee pulled me aside and whispered to me that the nursery was having an unadvertised half price sale on a number of plants and all hydrangeas were included. I wish I had the space for several more but am grateful that I can put this one in! I will be there tomorrow as they unlock the doors and open the gates.

I dont suppose that there is a reblooming blue flowering hydrangea similar in characteristics to Bella Anna - or is that just too darn greedy of me to wish for? ;)

When I have extra time Im going to read that thread Hay started - I am familiar with him through another forum and am aware that there are very few that knows as much as he does about hydrangeas. What a gorgeous garden he must have, not just due to his hydrangeas but all the other planting beds he must have.
Thank you all for your help and I am certainly going to explore Glowing Embers. If I must, other plants could be sacrificed to the gardening gods in order to make room for a new addition! The drawback would be the single bloom rather than reblooming abilities. I dont have a lot of room so all my roses and hydrangeas must be work horses. The only thing that can escape a rebloom and remain are my peonies. I only wish some genius could introduce a fluffy, frilly peony that would constantly rebloom AND would produce more the more you cut for the vase- what perfection that would be?

Sadly, that will probably not happen in my lifetime. But, I can dream......;)