Isn’t it wonderful? I lost many plants from last winter, but a few really surprised me, with magnolias showing unsuspected hardiness. Your oak-leaf Hydrangea looks splendid. It’s a great plant, but has failed twice for me. Maybe ‘Little Honey’ will do the trick.

I have grown 'Little Honey' for more than 15 years. In my climate, it never dies back at all and often will hold its foliage almost entirely through winter. But in all those years, it has bloomed maybe twice, one or two flowers at most. This year it is looking fantastic, but not a flower bud in sight. IME, compared to other types of oakleafs I have grown, this is a very shy bloomer. But that golden yellow-chartreuse foliage is stunning!!

Ditto GG's comment about the flowers but oh my what brightness it gives to a shady corner. I killed quite a few of these before I got it through my head that they really needed shade and more water than I had been providing. Descriptions all say that it will tolerate some sun but nnot in my zone 9b arid-air climate. Now I have three going strong. Relatively easy to root from cuttings.

I have had some leaves mophead before that produced pink blooms and found that the pink-yellow combination did not work for me. So I would, sometimes, cut the blooms early because I liked the look of the shrub without blooms better.

I considered LH after that. I figured that a white bloomer like LH would produce a better looking shrub, albeit until the blooms turned pink (or brown over here due to the heat).... I figured I may again cut the blooms then if I do not like the shade of pink combination with yellow leaves...

I was not expecting to hear that it does not bloom well though. I thought it would look well white on yellow leaves. Then, I suspected that your northern sun, being weaker, would throw a monkey wrench into my plans though. Yellow leaves here turn dark green earlier than in the north. I suspect LH's last yellow much longer where you guys are. But, I have been early looking to see a LH locally (at a plant nursery) to view the leaf colors in June which is when the leaves of the yellow mopheads turned green here.

Never turns green here........foliage is always a bright chartreusey-gold. But mine gets very little direct sun. Mostly bright, open shade. Even in my rather weak summer sun, the foliage will burn easily.

How nice. I suspected a longer "season" of yellow leaves for you. I located my Sun Goddess getting sun only from 10-11am years ago and the leaves turned green in June. I may have to try bright full shade on my next yellow one although I suspect it will always turn green before the end of the growing season.

Mine gets very early morning sun and as leaves thicken around it it will green up some as you can see, but not as much as some I've seen on other posts.

tj

After having two big trees cut down in 2017, my Little Honey has grown more, bloomed more, and stays a nice yellowish color even after the flush of new growth in April. I even have a few offsets (I assume they are offsets from the mother plant at least 10 feet away). The one thing that bothers me is there is one limb that has reddish leaves and smaller flowers (disease or injury somewhere on the limb?)

Early June starting to show the reddish leaves.

3rd week of May

3rd week of April

End of June showing the stark contrast between healthy looking leaves and the one branch showing all the reds you expect in fall.

How odd for this time of the year. Looks like it has red pigments out that I normally see later in the Fall. Chlorophyl production went down or anthocyanin production went up. A few leaf spots. Odd... as the leaves underneath are yellow-green. Is this one plant or two? The blooms look smaller in size in the 1st picture. Just wondering, have you used herbicides/chemicals nearby?

No weed spray near this. A little further away I was spraying poison ivy creeping under the fence from my neighbor's yard and my neighbor doesn't do a thing for his backyard. I will check it for damage this fall as one of my native azaleasis dying and I see the bark was damaged (from rodents probably).