What is the reason for digging up/transplanting? It is growing, although it should not have been cut down last year. They should be left alone and only pruned after winter is past. Not knowing your location we can’t tell if these will always die back in winter for you.

neighbor is offering them to you.. right??

yes... take them ..

H winter die back is common in our zone.. usually you prune back to 2 live buds.. or about 3 inches or so .... seems neighbor wither had excess die back.. or got a bit energetic with the prune ...

get them moved fast ... it can regrow to what you recall.. but it will need to grow a good root mass to get thru the worst of a midwest late summer ... so do some good digging and get a big gob of soil.. and as many roots as possible ...

if you cant do it in the next week... then do it in fall ... or be prepared to insure proper watering in july and august .... make it easy for yourself.. or do it the hard way ...

ken

ps: seems like i just typed this yesterday is some other post.. anyone want to shoot for a ' 3 for'???

Bigleaf hydrangeas are very difficult to grow in your zone without winter protection. You will get NO flowers from any old growth as that will die off with winter cold and needs to be removed down to the base of the plant unless there is any sign of life lower down......typically there is not. And any flowering from new growth or wood produced this season is iffy at best and generally is very halfhearted unless the plant is very well established.

And the rule of thumb for pruning ANY bigleaf hydrangea (H. macrophylla) is to only deadhead old flowers or the removal of dead wood after leaf out in spring. Anything else will affect flowering.

Conflicting answers between Ken and Gardengal. One says they are definitely worth the transplant and the other says these don’t grow well without protection in the winter.

And yes, they seemed to get very hyper when it came to pruning LOL

They’re free, so it’s worth a try. I think gardengals point was that hydrangea macrophylla will be more suseptible to cold damage (loss of some blooms), whereas other types of hydrangea, like arboreacens, would be hardier in your climate. I know some people really struggle to get macrophyllas to bloom. Like for years on end, lush foliage but no blooms.

Check out the Hydrangea forum. Lots of very detailed explanations of why bigleaf hydrangeas are not practical anywhere zone 6 or below without winter protection and why the variability of late spring temps make them a risky proposition even in zone 7 without protection. Even those that have been bred to flower on new growth as well as old growth are iffy.

I’m not seeing any indication of OP’s location or zone. Where is that info. coming from?

Floral, it's coming from the username and perhaps also from other posts where the location was stated. "Illini" refers to the University of Illinois athletics teams (mainly football). So by extrapolation, one could guess the OP is located in Illinois...which in fact has been stated in other threads - NW Illinois, zone 5.

Would be really helpful if this was included as part of the username so extrapolations unnecessary....... 😊 They don't always translate well across the pond.

The Illini is the nickname of the Uniniversity of Illinois and he has posted before. He’s in NW Illinois.

tj

If you knew which variety it was might help determine if they are worth the time. If one of the newer Endless Summer, Let's Dance or Tuff Stuff introductions I'd give it a try. If older, I'd pass.

Good idea on adding that to my user name. Sorry for not providing all the necessary info upfront!

I agree that cultivar name would be extremely helpful -- some of the newer varieties bloom on both old and new wood and can bloom in zones colder than 6.

If it's an Annabelle (H. arborescens)? Grab it and run -- blooms exclusively on new wood and hardy as a bone, you can hack it back to nubs and it will still put on a bountiful mid-summer display.

Repeat or new wood bloomers have a very mixed reputation in colder zones, even though they have been bred for those conditions. If the winter has been cold enough to kill the plant back to the roots - as it appears to be the case with the one in the photo - they often do not develop sufficient 'oomph' to generate current season growth vigorous enough to support flowering.

And the plant in question is definitely a bigleaf hydrangea, H. macrophylla.

I live in Indianapolis..Endless Summers are duds for me..tried winter protection..growing in a pot and overwintering out of the elements (works but a hassle)..

this is the best they ever looked which is NOT good enough..most years it's ZERO blooms..for now they're "groundcover"..if I ever catch up with other work I'll remove them and plant something better..

plant an oakleaf, paniculata or arborescens..a much better choice..

some of my arborescens..

Around here at least Endless Summer got dubbed "Endless Bummer"

Laurie..the same here!..I've heard Endless Bummer on an Indianapolis garden group..it's TRUE!..

I am quite satisfied so far with the blooming here in MN on the following:

Bloomstruck

Summer Crush

Tuff Stuff A-ha

Lets Dance Can Do

The 'Tuff Stuff' series are Hydrangea serrata cultivars, not H. macrophylla. H. serrata is quite bit hardier than H. macrophylla.

Endless Summer gets such bad comments on here! A neighbour grows them beautifully - this picture is from July 3, 2017 and she planted them either the year they were first introduced here or shortly thereafter... (Our soil here is neutral-to-alkaline so most non-white hydrangeas are shades of pink when they bloom.)

"Endless Summer gets such bad comments on here!"

And they are usually pretty well justified :-) There are pages of posts with similar complaints on the Hydrangeas forum. I would say that any successes growing this hydrangea in colder climates (without protection) are the exceptions, not the rule.

Since the neighbour who grows these so well, is ’only’ a ’casual’ gardener and gives them no special protection or treatment, I’ve always wondered why they do so well for her given that so many others seem to have trouble with them.

Woody, I've found in my experience that often "casual" gardeners can often have better luck than seasoned gardeners lol! My former neighbor used to buy things, which he didn't even know what they were, lol, plop them in the ground, often in the "wrong" spot, ignore them, and they would do beautifully. Me, I research, research, research, plan, purchase, plant, and I wouldn't say "baby" because I'm not THAT attentive lol, but certainly I would watch and adjust and do almost anything I could to give a plant what it supposedly needed, and often it would not thrive or it would just outright die lol. That was always a head-scratcher to me!! :)

I have tried to take a page out of his book though. If something is borderline I may give it a try anyway, as long as it's not an expensive plant. What the heck, right?

And speaking of borderline, I hesitated to post this because I don't want to appear argumentative - just giving my experience - but I have had a macrophylla come back reliably for almost 20 years, and bloom about, oh, at least 15 years of those 20. I even divided it about 10 years ago and have two of them (the original was a division from a friend). I believe it's a Nikko Blue. I don't do any active winter protection, but they are in a somewhat sheltered spot, near an oak tree and a large (about 3-4 foot tall) boulder. Maybe this is enough to help protect them from winter damage?

So, Illini, I know you are a zone colder than I am but I would say if these are offered to you for free, give them a shot! What do you have to lose except a couple of hours of labor? And good luck!

:)

Dee

Edited to add, woody, your neighbor's hydrangeas are beautiful!!

Dee - yeah, benign neglect is often an effective plan :-)

I no longer buy macs. I still have a couple that do OK because they're in a sheltered spot. I bought an endless summer when they first came out 20 or so years ago. Worst hydrangea ever.

People way over fertilize. They think because your yard needs nitrogen several times a year, it's good for all plants. It would be if you chopped every leaf in half every week. The truth is N is a growth signal and in nature plants get N at the same time they get water and it's generally in proportion to the amount of water they get. So it's the proper time for the plant to grow. if you constantly give your plants N, they will always be in growth mode. Which is bad for them long term. Plants need some rest time in the summer to harden off. That's why frequently the best thing to do is neglect your plants and let them do what they want. My best performing plants are ones I've neglected for years.

I'm not sure how over fertilizing entered the discussion.......or why. Unless growing in containers (which lack essential plant nutrients that MUST be supplied by the grower), it is rarely necessary to fertilize established plantings and most especially in summer. A good organic mulch generally supplies all the nutrient supplementation required. Annuals are treated a bit differently and may indeed require supplementation.

btw, plants receive nowhere near their N requirements from rain or irrigation.....maybe 10% in areas of very heavy rainfall. Easily confirmed by online science based sources.......

Dee, not all bigleaf hydrangeas are created equally :-) 'Nikko Blue' is an older cultivar that has demonstrated increased hardiness compared to others of that species and also one of few naturally remontant forms. This cultivar often grows, thrives and flowers well in conditions other mac would not tolerate and I would not take it as the measuring stick against which other bigleaf hydrangea hardiness should be compared.

Also, the performance of a bigleaf hydrangea in a single garden should also not be the guide by which other hydrangea performance is measured. Every garden has its own set of microclimates that will affect how well a borderline plant will or will not grow.

"btw, plants receive nowhere near their N requirements from rain or irrigation.....maybe 10% in areas of very heavy rainfall. Easily confirmed by online science based sources......."

So, where are they getting their N from?

From the atmosphere, from nitrogen fixing bacteria and from the decomposition of organic matter. It is the basic nitrogen cycle taught in any botany or horticulture class.

And of course fertilization when necessary :-)

Nitrogen fixing bacteria are a small source. And decomposition of organic matter uses circular logic since almost all the nitrogen came from plants to begin with. The ultimate source of the N was still rain water. Can you cite one of your sources that shows only 10% of N comes from rain water? I find the number way too low to be accurate. The only exception may be for farmers growing crops, but that's not representative of a typical garden. We're not trying to maximize corn production.

Have you ever studied the nitrogen cycle? It might be worth you spending some time as it appears you do not fully understand it. And it or any fertilization discussion is a wide deviation from the topic of this thread so perhaps you should take this up elsewhere.

So….I took them. Let’s call it a day lol