We have two hydrangea bushes, one on either side of the front steps. When we bought our house nearly 11 years ago they were the only things attractive on lot. My wife keeps them pruned nicely and every year they have beautiful bunches of flowers. This year is turning out to be no exception. They always start blooming about now, and are usually in full glory right around the beginning of July.
They seem a little brighter shade of pink this year, not sure why. Hydrangeas can change colors, and if you plant new bush they usually do change colors. They pick up different minerals or whatever in the soil and it changes the color. I’ve heard you can put pennies in the ground to get them to change.
One year someone actually stole the flowers. Early in the morning, before I would ever dream of waking up, someone came by and cut all the bunches of flowers off both bushes. This was a couple of days before my daughters birthday party, so instead of beautiful hydrangeas to welcome the guests, we had bare plants. We were furious, but what could we do. That year we got to enjoy the flowers for about two weeks and had to wait a full year to get them back. That hasn’t happened again, and I hope it never does. We’ve planted some bushes in the backyard just in case.
Anyway, you can enjoy these plants on Zooomr. There are more shots here and here.