The Best Hydrangeas for Asheville — What to Plant

I know, I know. You have Limelight Hydrangeas in your yard — we hear that a lot. And to that we say: lucky you! These beauties love our rainy, warm summers.

My friend Natalie owns a flower shop in California, and they don’t have hydrangeas out there. She has rigged a set of sprinklers and built a flower bed beneath the shade of a building to try to get the growing conditions just right! I wish her luck and wish she could experience even a fraction of our hydrangea summers here in North Carolina!

Out in California, they’re way more excited about hyrdrangeas than we are in the South. We almost have hydrangea fatigue this time of year! By November, y’all will be excited about hydrangeas again, and we’ll release our dried hydrangea collection.

But this year, we have so many hydrangeas, we decided to offer some fresh too!

Above is our farm manager, Melissa, showing you some of the beauties out in the field. We planted these Hydrangea Paniculata Limelight as 5-gallon pots in winter 2019/2020. We added compost and fertilizer at the time of planting, and we laid lanscape fabric around them to deter some weeds, but other than that, we have done nothing for them!

If you live in the Asheville area, you’ll have an easy time growing hydrangeas too! I would stick to Hydrangea Paniculata because they tolerate our cold springs. Hydrangea Macrophylla (the big mop heads) sometimes get bud burn in spring and fail to produce blooms.

Side note: Do not confuse macrophylla with macrophilia. When I double checked my spelling on Google, I learned macrophilia is sexual fantasies about giants. To each their own. Now you know, and I’m glad I fixed the spelling.

Hope you’re enjoying these dog days. Before you know it, we’ll be on the approach to fall, so enjoy these summery days while they’re still here!

I’m off to Michigan to tour the Raker Roberta greenhouses! I’m excited and will report back later this week!