Embracing hydrangeas: Few summer-flowering shrubs have the diversity and length of season provided by hydrangeas. Most are surprisingly tolerant of soil type, in gardens great or small

摘要

Just 20 years ago I dismissed hydrangeas as being old-fashioned, unpopular and ignored. But then, suddenly, I was smitten. I had bought an unprepossessing little plant I found in a corner of a small nursery and paid a song to take it home. That plantgrew. It flowered. And I did a double-take. Here was a hydrangea that had double florets on long stems around a cap of central fertile flowers, in a gentle shade of pink. And of course the label had faded, but eventually I worked out that it was Hydrangea macrophylla 'Izu-no-hana', (flower of Izu). A quick look at the atlas revealed Izu is a peninsula south and west of Tokyo, and more research revealed many more Japanese hydrangeas, none of which I had ever met. All of them were beautiful and quite different from the familiar mopheads and lacecaps of my childhood.