The blooms can get killed by various things. For example, lack of soil moisture will cause the plant to brown out the blooms. Too much sun can also damage the blooms. Where I live, summer temperatures are very high and instead of going from white to pink to magenta, VS blooms like to go from white to green-pink to brown. Or from white to brown. At least on year one. We will see in future years if it changes. Same thing happens with Fire And Ice blooms here.

Since your VS is still "young" in your garden, wait to see if it adapts to your garden's climate conditions and improves bloom colors in future years. I would wait at least 3 years to see if it produces blooms as it is supposed to. But if it does not produce good bloomage in 3 or so years and TLC does not help, I would give up on getting good results and use the "expensive real estate" used by VS for another hydrangea.

TLC suggestions, especially for the time when you have or are about to have blooms = 3-4" mulch up to the drip line at all times; evenly moist soil (no periods or dry soil, moist soil, dry soil again, etc); some sun protection in the afternoon (you can try shade cloth for this); some protection from hot drying winds in the summer; etc.

Thank you so much for your advice! I'll try really babying it this summer, and be particularly careful about watering. Last summer was pretty dry, so maybe that was the problem.

Hello, Frances. I am going to offer another suggestion that someone in MO tried and that it may work in NJ. I have little details so consider it an experiment. Use it if you continue having issues this year and the above suggestions do not help. So, to get around the tendency of VS to go from white to brown in the heat of the summer, prune the shrub late in the season (june maybe?). This will delay blooming and, hopefully, it will make VS bloom later than normal (like in the Fall, when hopefully when temps are lower). If you prune next year and it has problems this year and next year, try pruning even later, 1-2 weeks, until you find a date that seems to work most of the time. I am not sure how well this can work in locations like mine where the length of the hot season is extreme (May/June thru Sept) and where VS leafs out much earlier than in places up north. Pruning it here may make VS bloom smack in the middle of the hot July time frame; or just as temps kick into the daily 100s . I may have to prune it twice to delay bloomage and that sounds like a pain. So, I am also trying something else. The Quickfire and Little QF shrubs are some of the earliest paniculata bloomers so, after they leaf out early, they should bloom white early and then -I hope) they will turn pink before the worst of the summer arrives for me and makes the blooms turn brown. VS usually just goes from white to green-pink (or white to brown) so sometimes there is no pink-only or magenta phase.