Lovely. Congratulations on successfully getting a new hydrangea!

Your plants look very healthy and beautiful. Your buildings are neat too. I wish I had your storage shed. The clematis growing on the shed shows up well against the building. I have some cone flower plants of various kinds with funny buds and flowers. I intended to investigate that. I wonder if it is weather conditions or a disease. I buy coneflowers on sale in winter and not all make it. Some come up healthy and some have blasted or whatever you call it odd first flowers.

Very lovely! I love the clematis in the hydrangea. Charming. What else do you have growing?

Why don't you put a picture of that coneflower on the name that plant forum. I always get a quick response there. Then you can look it up and see if those are its flowers or if a thrip or something has made them that way.

I posted photos of it on the Name That Plant forum but I wasn't patient enough to wait for it to fully bloom. It was several pages down. I'll take another photo of it tomorrow and update it. The petals are still very thin but sort of hanging down now. Someone suggested Echinacea pallida which may be right. The petals looked yellowish at first which was confusing.
I don't ever see echinacea growing wild around here. There used to be some along the highway that goes to Walnut Grove but I think someone intentionally planted them as part of a beautification project.

Here is a link that might be useful: Name That Plant post - This has photos of the foliage too.

I have one Tennessee purple coneflower from the Springfield Master Gardeners sale. It has buds that have tiny petals that look yellow but are supposed open to be pink purple like the native coneflower here. Also Jim Magnum was giving away seeds of Tennessee coneflower on the seed exchange a couple of years ago.

I have one Tennessee purple coneflower from the Springfield Master Gardeners sale. It has buds that have tiny petals that look yellow but are supposed open to be pink purple like the native coneflower here. Also Jim Magnum was giving away seeds of Tennessee coneflower on the seed exchange a couple of years ago.

Christie,check out this website. I am voting our native pallida echinacea.

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=echinacea%20pallida&biw=907&bih=339&sei=yJi7T7H0KYXu2gWiwLHGCQ

Your Annabelle puts mine to shame! I will be working that bed today and watering it deeply....no pictures!

The clematis looks beautiful next to the shed.

I have an oakleaf hydrangea too, about 36 inches or less tall but the blooms may be over 12 inches. I really like it.

We are getting a little brown here for lack of rain. You look lush and green.

The Tennessee echinacea has wider leaves at the base. This is from the Master Gardener's sale in Springfield.

I think you're right about it being e. pallida Helen. Mine has little splits at the end of the petals like the ones in the google link. With the flower petals being so thin, it's not as showy as regular echinacea but it has about 20 buds/flowers altogether on one plant. That's pretty good considering it was a seedling last year.
Your clematis is a pretty color. It looks a lot like the one in the background of the picture Glenda took of her jackmanii. I should probably have gotten a named oakleaf hydrangea. I don't think the flowers on mine are over 12 inches like yours, not even close. I have another Annabelle that I stuck in my shrub row. It's struggling there where it has to compete with other shrubs, poor thing.

Give Glenda the credit for her guess and link. I think E pallida is beautiful. At least your first flower is not diseased because the normal flower has thin petals. I looked up Echinacea diseases because some of mine have odd flowers. There are serious diseases spread by insects that will eventually kill the plant. I am going to let mine grow and see if they get better. It could be weather or something benign.

I finally pruned out the dead stems on Annabelle yesterday and soaked the ground deeply. I hope she comes back to her previous vigor.

Christie, how do you prune yours?

Oops sorry for giving credit to the wrong person. Thanks for pointing that out Helen. Thank you Glenda! : )

Glenda I remember typing a reply a few days ago to your question about pruning but it's not here. I must've closed the window or something. I leave my Annabelle alone in the fall and just cut out anything that looks dead after it starts leafing out again in the spring. I think you can cut them way back even after they start growing in the spring. Something I read once is that it will make them have more flowers but they're smaller. I kinda like the big flowerheads. You can see in the photo, there's a downspout right by each one and not any competition from other trees or shrubs so they're happy there. Wish I could say it's because I have a green thumb but it's just because it's a choice spot for hydrangeas.

The flowers are more white than green now.

I finally cleaned mine up some and it is blooming with nice big blooms but the bush just isn't as big.

Thanks for the pruning tip.

Helen that sure looks like Annabelle.

I was about to give up but I see tiny buds coming on my Limelight hydrangea.

I think it looks like Annabelle too Helen. I looked to see if there are other named varieties of that kind of hydrangea (h. arborescens) and it looks like Annabelle is the one that's most commonly available but there's another called Grandiflora in case that rings a bell. There's a newer pink variety now that's a bit tempting. The Hydrangea Forum had an old thread on pruning Annabelle that's very informative.

I wish I could dig mine up and move it over about a foot so it wouldn't stick out into the driveway so much. I hope it's through growing.

Here is a link that might be useful: Annabelle Hydrangea - Hydrangea Forum

I think I was looking for Annabelle because of your posts. I planted mine too close to a fringe tree. I think my reasoning was that I would be sure to water the fringetree.