Life in my garden each season can be like a telenovela, with a cast of colorful characters, a somewhat improbable plot line, tempestuous relationships and the occasional untimely death. Of course telenovelas generally involve a lot of hair tossing and that doesn’t happen much at my place. Still, the similarities are there.
This year’s dramatic storyline involves hydrangeas, specifically the mophead varieties sometimes known as hortensias. Botanists call them Hydrangea macrophylla or bigleaf hydrangea, and the rest of us call them beautiful. For dramatic purposes, I will tell the tale of my hydrangeas’ troubles by amalgamating them into a single representative plant, which I will call Hortensia. Like all telenovela heroines, Hortensia is proud and beautiful, clothing herself each year in billowing blue blossoms. Her relatives elsewhere may be clad in blue-purple or pink, depending on their soil situations; but wherever they dwell, Hortensia and her family are the stars of the late spring garden. As the season progresses, the flowers dry elegantly on the branches. The big green leaves attract attention all summer long.
Alas, this year, in the northeastern garden that is home to our telenovela, Hortensia has suffered some dramatic reverses. Caught scantily clad and unprepared for late spring frosts, her buds were frozen and destroyed. In most cases the gaunt stalks are bare of swelling green shoots now, and stand in mute testimony to the ravages of unseasonable weather. The pollinating insects, who make up her usual crowd of suitors, give her a wide berth. The only glimmer of hope for poor Hortensia is the skirt of bright green growth springing up at her feet as the she regrows from her roots.
In a classic telenovela, some handsome male character would emerge onto the scene and make poor Hortensia so happy that she would bloom again by summer. Sadly, this cannot be the case, even if we had a gardener who looked like Enrique Iglesias and laid generous gifts of composted manure at Hortensia’s green feet.
Other hydrangeas may have had better luck. If the setting for your particular garden telenovela is a protected spot, your version of Hortensia may have emerged with undamaged buds and is, at this very moment, preparing to cover herself with colorful blooms a month from now. Sometimes partial bloom happens. If your Hortensia spent the late winter and early spring in the warm embrace of a nearby structure, the branches nearest the structure may bloom, while the others sit forlorn. It will look rather odd, but then again, in the world of televised drama, it is not unusual for leading characters to run around partially clad.
Some of Hortensia’s modern, reblooming mophead relations have been bred to bloom on both old and new wood. Like our poor Hortensia, her reblooming younger sister, Hortensia, Jr., who goes by trademarked varietal names like Endless Summer, suffered frozen spring buds. However, the skirt of new growth arising from Hortensia Jr.’s feet will produce flowers later this summer. Hortensia, Jr. will be fashionably clad before the growing season is out, rather than having to wait for next year. The insect pollinators will flock to her blooms, ignoring poor Hortensia.
So what should you do? Should you emulate a stereotypically faithless telenovela cad and spurn Hortensia, throwing her on the compost pile in favor of her younger, more floriferous sister? Many have done so. Or should you embrace the example of a principled telenovela hero and wait patiently for Hortensia to shine again? Such profound choices are better left to your conscience.
But wait…..There is another way…
In the great horticultural telenovela, bigamy and even polygamy are quite acceptable. You can keep both Hortensia and Endless Summer in your garden household, loving and caring for both of them, providing them with all the mulch and water that they crave. They will, in turn, reward you, with plentiful blossoms, even in years when Hortensia comes up short. This “big love” approach will guarantee happy endings in every season and save you from the guilt of consigning the faithful but vulnerable Hortensia to the compost pile, or worse yet, bulk pick-up.
While you make up your mind about that, clip back all of Hortensia’s dead branches. They are very obvious, because there is nothing fresh and green on them. The new growth at the base should be several inches tall by now. If you haven’t done so already, mulch thoroughly. Hortensia and her entire hydrangea family are thirsty creatures and conserving soil moisture is the best way to meet their needs.
The beauty of gardening and telenovelas is that while the situations and characters are familiar from year to year and series to series, there are always twists and variations. That is what keeps us watching and digging in the dirt. Next year, most likely, Hortensia will be back with a vengeance.