Ground Breaking Banter - Rick
Hanging baskets are always one of the most popular ways to enjoy annuals – they’re also one of the best Mother’s Day gifts, too. They provide easy, instant gratification without giving Mom too much work to take on, and a well-chosen basket will give her fabulous color all season long.
While ready-made hanging baskets abound, keep in mind the possibility of planting up your own
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When you think of hanging baskets, you don’t usually imagine shrubs. Sure, perhaps you may imagine a hanging basket of English ivy, which is in fact a woody plant, but even that doesn’t usually develop fully woody stems in a hanging basket environment. Over the years, we have experimented with growing all sorts of shrubs in hanging baskets to varying degrees of success, but there is one clear winner: Fairytrail Cascade Hydrangeas.
Fairytrail Bride Cascade Hydrangea, the original plant of the series, has been a plant on trial before. Sold in the EU as Runaway Bride, which is the name under which is won the RHS Chelsea Flower Show plant of the year in 2018, we were pleased to be able to bring it to North America in 2021. We renamed it to Fairytrail Bride, because we felt that Runaway Bride was kind of negative, and we started calling it Cascade Hydrangea to help differentiate it from other types of hydrangea because it is so different – and that’s precisely what makes it suitable to being grown as a hanging basket.
The number one most noticeable feature is that instead of growing like an upright or rounded shrub, the Fairytrail Cascade Hydrangeas grow horizontally, with long, arching – indeed, cascading – stems. They create flower buds at every leaf node of these elegantly cascading stems, which gives it the look of an elaborate garland covered in flowers. The other thing that’s very different about Cascade Hydrangeas is that it blooms much earlier than any other hydrangea – usually late spring/early summer. Of course, they will be blooming much earlier if you find them in garden centers now, since they will have been specially grown to be at peak for Mother’s Day, but once in the landscape, expect more of an early June bloom time in Michigan – earlier in warmer climates, later in cooler areas.
Today’s Plant on Trial is Fairytrail White Cascade Hydrangea, which is like Fairytrail Bride, but has big, rounded mophead flowers instead of the open lacecaps of the original. It’s also up for its own prestigious plant of the year award at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show! Winner will be announced on May 20 and we are excited to see if it wins.
But whether you have Fairytrail Bride, Fairytrail White, Fairytrail Green, or the new colorful Fairytrail Fresco Cascade Hydrangea, the care they need is all the same. It’s similar to big leaf hydrangeas, in that they bloom on old wood so should not be pruned. But their early bloom time requires one major change, and that’s that Fairytrail Cascade Hydrangeas should only be planted in part sun situations, and ideally, they should be in shade on spring mornings. This probably sounds like a pretty random claim, but let us explain: the much earlier bloom time of the Fairytrail hydrangeas mean that their flower buds enlarge in spring more rapidly than other old-wood blooming types. This makes them even more susceptible to damage from spring frosts and freezes, which are common in many areas, even in mild climates. By placing these plants where they are shaded in the morning, if one of those spring frosts or freezes hits, the ice crystals will melt slowly, minimizing the damage to the delicate tissue. Of course, you can also just drape an old blanket or towel over your plant on nights where a frost or freeze threatens and remove it when the danger has passed – this is enough to keep the flower buds intact.
Other than that, you can grow Fairytrail hydrangeas just like you would a big leaf hydrangea: avoid pruning, keep evenly moist, mulch is beneficial. If you are buying one of the hanging baskets for sale now, enjoy it as a hanging basket until the flowers start to fade – keeping well-watered, of course. Once the blooms do fade, the best thing to do is to take down your basket, plant the hydrangea in a part shaded location in your garden, water it in, and enjoy it as a new addition to your landscape.
If you’d like to add Fairytrail White Cascade Hydrangea or any of the 320+ Proven Winners ColorChoice Shrubs – to your garden or landscape, you’ll find a list of local retailers here.
Gardening Mail Bag - Stacey
Listener Randy writes that he received an online order of plants that were in rough shape and he’s worried about them, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to let anyone out there who has ordered plants online this year some general pointers.
- Try to avoid letting the box sit in a sunny spot for any length of time.
- Open immediately and if you have any concerns about what you’re seeing, contact the place where you purchased them immediately. Take photos, they will want to see them
- Most likely, unless the plants are very obviously dead, they will ask you to wait and see. This is totally normal and reasonable, as shipping is stressful and plants are generally resilient.
- Remove all packaging, especially any plastic around the container or the plant itself
- Keep in a cool, shaded spot for a few days to let plants acclimate
- Don’t panic if foliage color is off
I have a Perfect Storm that I want to transplant. I am in Zone 5B. Should I transplant now or wait until I see growth showing which is typically beginning of June? - Valerie
Generally speaking, it’s always best to do your transplanting of perennials and shrubs when they are dormant. That could mean fall or spring – either way, dormant plants transplant more successfully because they needn’t maintain a bunch of foliage while they’re trying to regrow their roots. In the case of Summerific Perfect Storm perennial hibiscus, however, it’s extra important to transplant it while dormant, especially during spring.
Perennial hibiscus are literally the last plant to emerge in the garden in spring – here in Michigan, they don’t show signs of life until Memorial Day weekend at the earliest. Once they do begin growing, those shoots are very thin and delicate, and damage to any of them would severely set the plant back. You’ll still need to be careful because those tiny “eyes” are nonetheless developing, but they won’t be quite as susceptible to damage, plus you’ll have a better chance of them emerging vigorously now than trying to align them after digging if they had already emerged.
Do you have a question for us? We’re happy to help! E-mail us or use the contact tab above. Due to high volume, we may not get to your question, so if you need an answer quickly, please reach out via the Proven Winners website.
Branching News - Rick
We continue our conversation on hanging baskets, with a little bonus tulip talk sprinkled in.
