Hydrangea Little Quick Fire and Bobo
* Common name: Hydrangea Little Quick Fire and Bobo
Hydrangea Little Quick Fire (Proven Winners/Color Choice photo)
* Botanical name: Hydrangea paniculata
* What it is: Two new compact forms of panicle hydrangeas – ones that bloom on new wood from mid-summer into early fall. Branch tips produce large, fat, cone-shaped flowers that start white and mature to rosy-pink and finally to rusty brown by winter.
* Size: 4 to 5 feet tall and wide.
* Where to use: Little Quick Fire and Bobo make excellent specimens in any sunny to partly sunny mixed garden or along an east, west or south foundation. They also make a good blooming hedge around patios or along property borders. Full sun or part shade.
* Care: Thin out excess or crossing branches at the end of winter. Also shorten the rest of the plant then as low as ankle-high for maximum compactness. Stick with just the thinning is size is OK. Will do fine even with no pruning. Scatter a granular, balanced fertilizer over the bed at winter’s end. Water needed only in very dry weather; these are the most drought-tough kinds of hydrangea. Cut a few flowers for arrangements.
Hydrangea Bobo in the white-flower stage.
* Great partner: Shrub roses are good flowering-shrub partners. Plant around the base with pink vinca, white alyssum, purple angelonia or pink or purple petunias (annuals) or pair with phlox, dwarf catmint, salvia, lavender and/or hardy geraniums (perennials).