Dear Dolores Hydrangea – 3 Gallon Pot

Growth Habit / Form:  Bushy, Rounded, Upright

Flower Color:  Blue or Pink or both and Lavender depending on soil pH

Flower Size:  Large, up to 8″ in diameter

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Growing naturally 5 feet tall and wide in a rounded mound, Dear Dolores Hydrangea can be grown in garden beds or containers. It is ideal for use as a specimen or accent in home foundation plantings, flowering shrub borders and perennial gardens. In larger landscape spaces it is especially dramatic in small to large groupings or in straight or staggered rows as a colorful hedge.

Spacing:  4′ for solid hedges;  7′ or more for space between plants

Note:  For our customers who live and garden north of USDA Planting Zone 5a, where this Hydrangea variety is not winter hardy outdoors, you can enjoy it in containers that can be moved indoors during winter and placed back outside when temperatures warm up in spring.

Dear Dolores Hydrangea is very easy to grow in most any moist but well-drained soil with average fertility and full sun to part shade in northern zones and part shade (morning sun with afternoon shade or filtered sun) in southern zones. For best flowering, we suggest 4 hours of direct sun light per day. As with so many other ornamental plants, a constantly soggy or wet soil is problematic. Flower color is your choice. Acidic soils will make blue flowers while a neutral to slightly alkaline soil will make pink flowers. Neutral soil is known to make blue, pink, and lavender flowers!

Note:  Dear Dolores is a Hydrangea macrophylla species that produces its flowers from buds that formed on “old wood” (during the previous year). This means that even though it is tempting to cut them back in the winter, when they are only bare sticks jutting out of the ground, don’t do it. The flower buds are already formed and hidden in those bare sticks, so don’t cut them off if you want flowers.