How to plant a tree hydrangea in the garden: planting and caring for a shrub

Hydrangeas are very popular among flower growers and plant lovers around the world. There is a reason to love hydrangea: the plant is unpretentious and blooms profusely from spring to autumn. Its inflorescences amaze with their variety and beauty of forms. The color range is the most extensive (besides, the plant can change its color and shades during one season). The decorativeness of the hydrangea is also given by its curly leaves. Unfortunately, outdoor cultivation in mid-latitudes is too severe a test for most hydrangeas - they are very thermophilic. One of the exceptions is the tree hydrangea (which came to us from the east of North America) - it is cold-resistant and will be happy to "register" in your garden.

Did you know? The hydrangea family (80 species) has existed on Earth for millions of years (from 25 to 70 million). The main natural distribution area is North America and East Asia (China, Korea, Japan). Europeans first met the tree hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens) in 1732. It was discovered in the Appalachians by a farmer, amateur botanist John Bartham. In 1768, the French round-the-world expedition of Louis de Bougainville brought to Europe from about. Mauritius large-leaved hydrangea. The history of the plant gaining its popular name is connected with this expedition. Military engineer J.-A. Bernarder de Saint-Pierre, courting the wife of the manager of Mauritius, Madame Poivre, gave her bouquets of beautiful flowers from an unknown shrub that he discovered on the island. Expedition doctor F. Commerson intended to suggest naming the plant after this woman, but the presence of Prince K. G. Nassau-Siegen on the expedition and the desire to distinguish himself prompted him to propose naming the flower after the prince's sister, Hortensia. In Japan, this flower is called "Ajisai" - "Purple Sun". The scientific name - "Hydrangea macrophylla" (from Greek literally - "water" and "vessel") indicates the love of this plant for water. But the term "hydrangia" is not widely used.

Hydrangea tree: characteristic

Description tree hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens) has the following: refers to deciduous shrubs, usually grows up to 1.5 m (in America it can reach 3 m). The shoots are tubular, straight, the leaves are green, large (in the form of an ellipse), covered with bluish pubescence from below, along the edge - serrated. Blooms profusely with large (15-20 cm in diameter) corymbose inflorescences (white and cream with greenish hues) from July to October. Differs in winter hardiness and rapid growth of shoots (from 20 to 30 cm per season).

Hydrangea arborescens has become the basis for breeding a large number of varieties with increased cold resistance (with different flowering periods, inflorescence sizes, shades, etc.). The most popular are:

What you need to know when planting a tree hydrangea

In order for the hydrangea tree to feel comfortable in your garden, its planting should take into account the preferences of the plant. First of all, it concerns lighting and soil.

Important! Hydrangea does not tolerate transplants (especially frequent ones) - it “departs” from the stress for a long time, blooms poorly. This circumstance must be taken into account when choosing a landing site in order to make it as permanent as possible.

plant lighting

Hydrangeas grow well in any light, but practice has shown that:

under the bright and scorching sun (especially in more southern regions), the size of the inflorescences decreases, plant growth slows down;
dense shade leads to the fact that the inflorescences do not develop, become rare, flowering decreases.

The best option would be to grow hydrangeas in partial shade. An ideal landing site would be an area with midday penumbra, morning and evening sun.

Soil for hydrangea tree

Hydrangea is not picky about the composition of the soil. Most of all, the plant prefers fertile loamy soils with good drainage and high acidity (all mycotrophic plants need soil fungi). Hydrangea arborescens of all hydrangeas best tolerates the presence of lime in the soil. The soil should not be dense, it should pass air and water well (when adding sand, it should be borne in mind that water in such soil will go deeper faster). With a lack of acidity, if desired, it can be increased with special additives (sawdust, coniferous earth, brown peat, etc.).

Did you know? The intensity and color of the color of hydrangea inflorescences depends on the degree of acidity of the soil. If you water a blooming adult hydrangea twice with four buckets of aluminum sulfate solution (30 g per 10 liters of water), the white color of the inflorescences will change to blue, pink flowers will turn purple.

Planting hydrangeas in the garden

Hydrangea tree will become a decoration of the garden, if it is properly planted and properly cared for.

When is the best time to plant tree hydrangea?

Hydrangea tree can be planted in spring and autumn. Each case has its own advantages. The main plus of the autumn planting of hydrangeas is that the planted plant will begin flowering already with the onset of spring. Large bushes are planted in autumn, which have a developed root system. In more northern regions, it is better to carry out an autumn landing in September; a shelter should be prepared for wintering.

Planting in autumn:

does not take much time;
harden hydrangea, increase its disease resistance.

When planting in the spring, you need to wait until the end of frost (taking into account different regions, this may be April or early May). In any case, the soil should be well warmed. Young seedlings are planted with an open root system.

Planting hydrangeas in a tree-like spring has the advantage that seedlings:

quickly take root;
get sick less;
overwinter better.

Important! Hydrangeas with a closed root system, bought in specialized stores, easily tolerate transportation and replanting, can be planted in open ground at any time from spring to autumn.

Selection of seedlings for planting

Saplings are sold with an open and closed root system (in special containers). When choosing seedlings, you should pay attention to:

to the height of plants (should be from 50 to 100 cm);
on shoots (there should be 2-3 live shoots);
on the kidneys (must be whole, large and fresh);
on the bark (should not be damaged).

In seedlings with open roots, the root system should be developed, intact, without dryness and rot. Their length must be at least 30 cm. If the roots of the seedling are hidden by the container (visual inspection is not available), you should find out when the seedling was transplanted (recent transplantation is undesirable). Immediately before planting, an earthen clod should be inspected: light young roots should be visible on it. Gardeners recommend planting three to four year old plants.

Seedlings with open roots should be purchased immediately before planting (if for some reason planting is not possible, then the seedling should be placed in a dark place and the roots should be kept moist).

Did you know? In floriculture, there is a practice when planting hydrangea tree seedlings to lay a soaked hydrogel in the hole (if you lay it dry, then when it swells, it will begin to increase in size and push the seedling out). The hydrogel will retain moisture, nourish the roots of the seedling even in hot weather.

Scheme of planting a hydrangea seedling

Before planting a tree hydrangea in the garden, it is necessary to correctly calculate the planting pattern. You need to take into account:

The process of planting a tree hydrangea includes several operations:

mulching by 10-15 cm (a mixture of sawdust, needles, straw, paper, burlap, expanded clay is best). This will allow you to better retain moisture, protect against weeds, and protect from the cold.

Important! To prevent infection with infectious diseases and the introduction of pests when mulching the soil, you need to carefully control the quality of the mulch, use proven ingredients.

Hydrangea treelike: how to care for a shrub

Tree hydrangea is unpretentious - care comes down to watering, fertilizing, mulching, loosening the soil and pruning.

Watering the plant

The scientific name of hydrangeas - "hydrangia" - directly indicates the love of this plant for water. The root system of hydrangeas grows in a horizontal plane, and with a deep occurrence of groundwater or during a dry period, a lack of moisture is immediately reflected in the developed above-ground part.

For the normal development of hydrangeas, it is necessary to water:

regularly. The plant should receive at least 30 liters of water weekly. Mulching the trunk circle in combination with natural precipitation will help reduce water consumption;
soft water without chlorine (hydrangeas especially love rainwater). Therefore, water for irrigation must be prepared in advance - to defend tap water and / or collect rainwater in containers;
non-cold water (20-23 degrees Celsius);
evening or morning;
not getting on the inflorescences when watering (water makes them very heavy, and the shoots can break).

How to fertilize tree hydrangea

In the first year after planting, fertilizer for tree hydrangea is not required to be applied to the soil (there is enough nutrients in the hole). In the future, it is necessary to regularly feed - at least three times a season:

with the appearance of the first shoots (April-May) - complex fertilizer ("Fertik", etc.) or a mixture of superphosphate and potassium sulfide (30 g per sq. M) and urea (20 g per sq. M) is applied;
with the beginning of budding (mid-June) - a mixture of potassium sulfide (40 g per sq. M) and superphosphate (70 g per sq. M). Mullein infusion will be a good nitrogen supplement (leave 7 kg of manure per 3 liters of water for 4 days) - 1 liter per bucket of water;
during flowering (end of August) - organic fertilizers (compost, rotted manure).

In September, it is no longer necessary to feed - the plant enters the stage of rest and preparation for wintering.

Soil care in the garden

The soil needs periodic loosening (so that a dry crust does not form and the access of air and water to the roots is not hindered). The earth is loosened (by 5-8 cm) around the hydrangea with a radius of 60 cm. You need to loosen two or three times over the summer. At the same time weeds are weeded.

As practice shows, it is not difficult to prune a tree hydrangea correctly, but this must be done from the first year after planting (provided that the plant is 4-5 years old).

Pruning allows you to stimulate growth, increases the number and size of inflorescences. The main time for pruning tree hydrangeas is spring (from the moment the snow melts until the leaves begin to bloom).

In the spring, the following types of pruning are carried out:

sanitary (after wintering, dried, frozen or broken shoots are removed);
anti-aging (for plants aged 5-6 years and older - cutting under the base of old shoots with weak growth);
thinning (the fight against thickening - the removal of small, weak, growing towards the center, etc. shoots).

In autumn, only shortening pruning is carried out (last year's shoots).

Some gardeners recommend doing the main pruning in the fall. Tree hydrangea does not tolerate pruning before wintering, and pruning in the fall is undesirable - it may not recover and freeze in winter.

Did you know? The inflorescences cut during the autumn pruning are perfect for making dry bouquets. With proper drying, hydrangea flowers retain their color: remove all leaves from cut shoots, hang them down with inflorescences in a dark room with good ventilation. To keep cut hydrangea flowers fresh in a vase longer, you also need to cut off all the leaves, split and burn the end of the shoot.

Reproduction of tree hydrangea

Five ways are practiced on how to propagate tree hydrangea.

Least used way - propagation by seeds. In this way, cultivars of hydrangeas do not reproduce - they lose their main characteristics. In addition, it takes at least three years for seedlings to germinate.
The second method of propagation of hydrangeas, the most common - cuttings. There are two ways of cutting hydrangeas: lignified and green cuttings.

In the first case, grafting occurs in early April (before bud break). The seedlings obtained in this way are of better quality (more than 70% of them take root). Cuttings with two buds are cut from the cut shoots - with an oblique cut under the bud from below and a straight cut (2-3 cm from the top bud) from above. The cuttings should be planted at an angle of 60 degrees in a mixture of peat and sand (the lower bud should be deepened by 3 cm), kept under polyethylene in a greenhouse and watered abundantly.

In the second case, cuttings take place in summer and autumn (best of all - mid-July, during budding). Cuttings are cut with two leaf nodes (tops with buds are not suitable for cuttings). The lower leaves are removed, half is cut off from the upper ones.
Process the cutting for 30 minutes with "Fundazol" (10 g per bucket of water), then the lower cut with a root formation accelerator. Another option is to keep the cuttings in the dark for two hours in Kornevin, Zircon, Heteroaukin. Treat the upper cut with brilliant green and deepen it into a wet mixture of two parts of peat and one sand (up to the top sheet). Cover with a jar (or the cut-off part of a plastic bottle with a neck), water twice or more a week. Such cuttings take root in about 25-30 days. Growing tree hydrangea is carried out the next spring after wintering.

The third way is reproduction by layering.

This is done before bud break in the spring as follows:

dig up the ground around the hydrangea and level it;
choose one of the lowest shoots, cut off the leaves (in the area from the ground up to 15 cm);
make a radial groove (5-10 cm deep), lay the shoot;
fix the shoot with crutches (or press down with a stone), sprinkle with soil (the end of the branch remains outside, you can attach it to a peg) and moisten.

By the end of summer, young shoots appear on the cuttings, which need to be spudded every 10 days. Branch of layering can be carried out in late autumn or next spring.

Important! For the fastest rooting, gardeners use different methods - they pull the layers in front of the first deep developed bud with a wire (with growth, the wire will cut into the shoot and roots will appear at the site of damage); remove the bark from the bottom of the dug area. The fourth way is by dividing the bush.

Before planting a tree-like hydrangea by dividing the bush, the outer shoots are cut and watered very abundantly. After that, you need to do the following operations:

dig a bush;
wash the roots
divide the bush (in two or more parts);
cut the ends of the roots;
plant the separated bushes in a prepared place.

This method of reproduction is mainly used when transplanting hydrangeas.

The fifth way is by dropping a seedling in the autumn (something in between how to divide a hydrangea bush in spring and propagate by layering). For planting, a prepared trench with a sloping bottom is used. The seedling is laid so that the roots are deeper, the shoots are higher. First, the root is dug in, the shoots are laid out like a fan and dug in too. You can put a layer of peat on top (so that the plant does not freeze in winter). In the spring, after the earth warms up, the buds on the buried shoots will come to life and grow. At the end of summer, the hydrangea needs to be dug up and new shoots separated, as a result we get several seedlings (up to 10) with a well-formed root system.

The main pests and diseases of hydrangea tree

Tree hydrangeas, with proper care for them, rarely get sick.

High humidity, a decrease in temperature can provoke infection with fungal diseases (especially if there is a source of infection) - downy and powdery mildew, white and gray rot. Leaves and flowers are primarily affected. Against fungal diseases, copper oxychloride (HOM), Bordeaux liquid, "Fundazol", "Chistotsvet", etc. help.

Of the pests, garden snails, spider mites and aphids cause the greatest harm:

Did you know? Hydrangea flowers are divided into barren, or sterile, and fruitful. Sterile petals attract insects, decorate the plant, can form a border, can be dispersed throughout the inflorescence. During the season, their pigmentation changes - greenish shades turn into snow-white, then pinkish ones appear. Small, fertile flowers are in the center of the inflorescence, and their color does not change.

Hydrangea treelike: wintering plants

Hydrangea tree has sufficient winter hardiness. But it’s still not worth the risk (even in the middle latitudes, severe frosts are possible in winter), especially preparing for winter does not take much time and effort:

spud, add peat and mulch (in the trunk circle - 25-30 cm);
tie the shoots (branches of the hydrangea tree do not bend to the ground - they can break off), drive a few pegs around the bush, attach spruce branches, wrap with agrofibre (lutrasil, spunbond, etc.) and tie.

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