Planning the Hydrangea Garden

One of the things that I love so much about Iowa is that there are seasons here. It actually looks like a completely different place depending on the month because the landscape changes so much with each month. Especially at Gaye Gardens! The house comes alive in the spring like nothing I've ever seen before.

The landscape that came with the house was extremely beautiful but lacked some... variety (I guess you would call it?) among the gardens. So we’ve been working on slowly adding in some more exciting plants. I mean more exciting than the peonies, Black-eyed Susan, phlox, repeat that currently goes on.

#boring

I've always wanted one of those magical yards you see in the northeast with all of the beautiful hydrangea borders.

This will never be our yard.

So I made one! Kind of...

In March, I ordered 54 hydrangeas. Yes, I know that sounds like a lot but it really isn't considering how big the yard is. Plus I could only afford baby (1 gallon) hydrangeas so they will not be full-grown for a couple of years.

Babies!

I wanted pink hydrangeas for the front of the house since the peonies are only pretty for two weeks and then they die and barf their guts out all over everything so there’s no color until the Black-Eyed Susan and ditch phlox creeps out at the end of July.

Incrediballs are these really magical giant cloud looking hydrangeas that used to only come in white. Plus I just like the name. Now they make a blush version (one of my signature colors) so I knew I had to have it. I planted 18 of those along the front of our house.

#squadgoals -stolen from my Pinterest board.

AND I really wanted a hedge. I love hydrangea hedges so I figured I’d just go ahead and plant one while I was digging holes in the yard. 21 holes later… I had one very sad looking hedge. But in a few years it will be a glorious towering pile of flowers!

Planning/planting the hedge last spring!

I found these really beautiful Limelight hydrangeas that are perfect for the hedge. I originally wasn't a fan of 'Limelight' Hydrangeas but they sort of grew on me. I was looking for something that got really tall and had a lot of flowers and these are just what I was looking for. I thought their flowers looked like footballs but now I kind of love them. They also start out green, then white, then PINK, then red, then they die and come back next year.

So... this could be incrediball (see what I did there) or it could all look like a giant pile of panicle flowered shit in a couple of years. That is the beauty of plants, if you don't love them, you can just dig them up and give them to someone else!

Fingers crossed!