Oakleaf Hydrangea ‘Snow Queen’
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Watching the Hydrangeas bloom can keep me entertained for a long time. This is a slow-motion feast for the eyes as the flowers unfold and subtly change over a period of weeks each spring.
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Oakleaf Hydrangea ‘Ruby Slippers’ is a smaller shrub, and its flowers turn a rosy dusky pink in summer.
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The flowers are barely noticeable as they begin to appear, small, tight and creamy green against the shrub’s large leaves.
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H. quercifolia ‘Snow Queen’ four years on from planting.
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As the panicles lengthen and swell, the buds open, one by one, into pure white flowers.
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Even as they open, the flowers remain subtle in early summer, allowing the shrub’s beautiful leaves to garner equal admiration.
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Texture remains more interesting than color in these early stages of the oakleaf Hydrangea’s annual show.
As the flowers mature, they will become more noticeably white before fading to shades of cream, pink, mauve, and finally caramel. By October, the leaves will still command our attention as they turn scarlet.
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But in May, these beautiful native Hydrangeas emerge lush and green, blending into the lush, leafy enveloping green of our early summer garden.
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Woodland Gnome 2018
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“Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally.
Make it the object of pursuit,
and it leads us a wild-goose chase,
and is never attained.”
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
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“At last came the golden month of the wild folk-
– honey-sweet May,
when the birds come back, and the flowers come out,
and the air is full of the sunrise scents and songs
of the dawning year.”
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Samuel Scoville Jr.
Forest Garden 