Film critics and historians love to compile lists of the top ten movies ever, inevitably with Citizen Kane at number one. Or at least this was the case in the 1980s when I was studying film among other things. Now one finds oneself making lists of plants. As always, the critics' top ten is never going to be a list of inexplicable personal favourites but each must have a sensible weightiness to earn its place. Hardy geraniums - occasionally exciting, always hardworking - they are in the pantheon. Hydrangeas are contenders for the top three because they have so much going on and there really is something for everyone. They are varied in leaf shape, habit, colour - some people like unearthly blue, others prefer cooking apple green. And within a plant, the fertile and infertile bracts do their bit for texture. Side-by-side branches of one of the best,
Hydrangea quercifolia, or oak-leaved hydrangea (shown above and below) look as though they could belong to different plants. Good leaf colour in autumn to follow.
If the oak-leaved variety is too rangey and unpredictable,
Hydrangea arborescens Annabelle (shown here in deep focus) cannot be argued with. So accomplished it is almost a bit of a yawn, and with a ridiculously long playing time: it could be the Citizen Kane of plants.
In New England our Annabelles were over by the end of August. Nice to see yours are still bloomin'.
ReplyDeleteIn Old England they are entering their long denouement - pale green, which we are enjoying now, followed by brown. And then it starts all over again, on a continuous reel.
ReplyDeleteI should have mentioned - this last picture was taken in July!
Beautiful photos. This might seem apropos of nothing, but if you go to
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cebm.net/index.aspx?o=2320
and scroll to the bottom of this week's post you'll find 'Plant of the Week'. Richard Lehman writes very entertaining updates for GPs, but it's rare that the blogs I follow for professional (his) and personal (yours) enjoyment intersect so neatly
I do enjoy sharing thoughts with hyper-intelligent people (now and then).
ReplyDeleteI have just ordered several Annabelle's for a shady spot three days ago. I hope they look as good as your pictures.
ReplyDeleteThe pictures were taken at Brooke Hall, so a team of gardeners would be helpful though not essential.
ReplyDeleteWhilst imbibing at a local hostelry last night the topic of hydrangeas came up, or rather Madonna’s take on them. Madonna managed to hijack The Venice Film Festival by inadvertently making known her loathing of the plant. Her comments went ‘viral’, Forums were set up to discuss peoples most hated plants.
ReplyDeleteA few years ago I would have sided with Madonna. The problem with the hydrangea is that there are just so many pinkish blue ones sitting in front of suburban houses. They drag you down. They lack ambition.
A neighbour, a fashion lecturer, said she was rather proud of her Japanese hydrangeas, whose leaves are now turning brilliant red, similar to that of an acer. I have only recently come round to the hydrangea after seeing some beautiful white ones against a red tiled house in a village in East Sussex.
Madonna has since made a ‘joke’ video saying that she still hates hydrangeas. It’s roses she loves. Recently an urbanite friend of mine made the startling comment that she loathes all roses, as they epitomize everything she hates about the English cottage garden, and so it goes…
Poor old Madonna - it's like saying 'I don't like fruit cocktail.' She'd be more interesting if she did.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the hydrangea can work really well if it is a definite colour not an indecisive one (picture the smart shingled house in East Hampton with mounds of deep blue hydrangeas round the door). But Madge apparently does not do context. Or maybe they trigger a very distant memory of suburban Detroit, in which case the journalist deserved to be punished.
ReplyDeleteQuite. Context is everything, as we know.
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