Plants with meaning, part 4

Time for another blog post about growing plants from cuttings! 🙂🌸

To continue yesterday's post, I successfully started two hydrangeas from cuttings over the last couple of summers; my second went from a small cutting to a small shrub in the course of a year.  (Which was amazing considering how little I was home to nurture it.)

Years ago, in one shady corner of my yard, I planted a small hydrangea from Lowe's.  It struggled, it didn't seem too happy in it's corner, we left town for a while and when I came back it was gone.  I think the person mowing our lawn let the grass get a little high, didn't realize it was there, and took it out.

So I had to start over.  I kept getting hydrangea cuttings that didn't want to root.  I finally got one going, it made it a year and died.  So I've put my time in working on this corner!  But I didn't want to give up.  I really, really wanted a hydrangea in this spot, and I really, really wanted to grow one from a cutting.  So I tried again.

At the entrance to the neighborhood next to ours, there are several large-ish hydrangea bushes planted behind the sign with the neighborhood's name.  They are visible, but not very.  I fell in love with this hydrangea every time I passed it walking my dogs.  It's beautiful.  It's a hydrangea with blooms of different colors at once; some purple, some pink, and some in-between.  I love it.

So I clipped some small cuttings from the back of the bush that was behind the sign, from a spot that wasn't visible unless you were standing behind the sign, in front of a fence.  (Translation: the spot was not visible at all to 99.9% of passers-by, hence my reason for clipping from it.)

And finally, I got one to root.  My cutting showed some growth, than made it through the winter.  I'm not sure what I did right this time, but I did something.  I saw the first flower last summer and it was exciting!  Here it is:

Ignore the tree lily growing behind it and the passion flower vine in front...

The pink flower on the right is the first flower it's given me.

For some reason the left side looks bigger and more vigorous, but the whole shrub seems happy in it's spot!

(Note the little fence around it; I learned my lesson about weed wackers and trying to grow cuttings!)

I passed the mother of my hydrangea baby one day last October when it was full of blooms and looking absolutely beautiful.  There was a deep freeze coming that night, the first one of the year.  I knew the temperatures would drop so low that all the flowers would freeze and die off.  I couldn't stand the thought of them gone, so I waited till dark, went back to the shrub, and clipped the flowers off to put in a vase.  Here they are:

Aren't they lovely?? 💕

The initial colors of the first blooms on this shrub are vivid and bright.

By October they had faded to these soft shades of cream, pink and purple.

As they dried they continued to look beautiful  I kept them dry in the vase for months.

That's another thing I love about hydrangeas; the color shifting!  The flowers of certain types bloom one way and slowly change to another - and they are very long lasting as cut flowers.  What's not to love?

This hydrangea's story will be: the-one-I-finally-got-to-grow-from-a-cutting-from-the-neighborhood-next-door.  (After the little one I bought at Lowe's died!)

And finally, I've got one more cutting I tried to root last summer.  Here it is:

This little hydrangea cutting came from a plant I gave to friend for her 50th wedding anniversary.  It was a pretty purple hydrangea.  Such a small cutting!

I wasn't sure this was going to do anything, but I put it in a glass of water to see.  (I love my plant experiments so much that I have little cuttings in little cups of water all over the place in my windows during summer...)  After a month, it was just as green and vibrant as when it was first cut.  So I thought I'd put it in the ground and see what it would do.

After a couple of weeks, it looked like there was a small green node growing at it's base.  It was definitely alive!

I covered it when it got really cold, but it's hard to tell when I check on it now if it's alive or not.  It started, but were the roots big and strong enough to last before the weather changed?  I'll have to wait and see.  It doesn't look so good.  But you never know!

And that's what's so much fun about gardening!  The surprise successes, the tiny babies that come to life with a little bit of love and nurture.  The surprise deaths are the NOT fun part of course, but I suppose they make the survivors seem all that more special.  I must have tried to root a hydrangea in the corner of my yard at least six times before I got one to take.

But it has, and I can't wait to see what it does this year!