Endless Summer hydrangeas

There are some very shrewd operators down at Bailey Nursery in Newport Minnesota. They have launched a full frontal assault with their new, cool, blue hydrangea called Endless Summer. A whole website devoted to this breakthrough hydrangea, www.endlesssummerblooms.com and an advertising campaign is set to roll through North America like a Tsunami.

"There's more hype about this plant than I've ever seen before," says Tom Intven, President of Canadale Nurseries in St. Thomas. Canadale is a grower of impeccable plant material, and even Intven who is as unflappable as a test pilot, lets his heart race a bit about this one. "It's hardy in Zone 4 Minnesota and the blooms are big and gorgeous," he says.

The flowers are the size of a musk melon, there's lots of them, and Bailey Nursery swears it will bloom all summer. In acid soil the flowers will be a heart melting blue, in alkaline soil they will be a romantic, Victorian pink.

Most northern gardeners know and love these big leaf or mophead hydrangeas called Hydrangea macrophylla. Many a heart has been broken trying to grow the lovely Nikko Blue. But during an extremely cold winter, flower buds are killed and the mopheads mope without a single blossom.

The hydrangea that was to become Endless Summer, was spotted in 1982 by Vern Black, Vice President of Production for Baileys. "It was dumb luck in some respects," he says. "I saw it blooming in my neighbours yard. They are great gardeners, and it was blooming even after the coldest winters."

Black took cuttings, the hydrangea moved to the Bailey trial beds and Endless Summer was tested for ten years before Bailey's decided it was the real deal- ever blooming, extremely cold hardy and even tolerant of badly timed pruning. Because it flowers on both old and new wood it can survive pruning at the wrong time of year, and still produce flowers.

Eventually the hydrangea was spotted by the great plantsman Dr. Michael Dirr. Dirr's book, Manual of Woody Landscape Plants is as essential to gardeners as the Joy of Cooking is to cooks. Dirr saw the shrub in the trial bed and saw the promise of great things. He got some cuttings, took them back to the University of Georgia and started intensive testing. The big, mophead hydrangea continued to produce flowers, even after the first flush of blooms were removed.

"Its ability to produce flowers really is amazing, and it does have superior hardiness," says Dirr who describes himself as one of the last "chalkboard lecturers" at the University of Georgia.

Dirr has finished a book, Hydrangeas for American Gardens for Timber Press (www.timberpress.com), and calls the blue, pink, red and purple flower colour range on Endless Summer unrivalled by any other flowering shrub. Other plantsmen are calling it the most significant shrub introduction in the last 25 years. Among hydrangeas alone, Dirr describes three new oakleaf types including one called 'Amethyst' with sensational wine-red flowers.

Endless Summer hydrangea will be in nurseries and garden centres across Canada this spring.

"About one million of them will be shipped out this season" says Black. In the eastern part of Canada Endless Summer is being grown by Sheridan Nurseries.

Photos of Endless Summer are beguiling. There's something about it that evokes a clapboard house on Nantucket with a wraparound porch, a hammock rocking gently, and a deep green lawn running down to the dock and the hydrangeas in all their billowy beauty, spilling over a flagstone walkway.

A seductive thought for the beginning of spring.