FlowerFull® Smooth Hydrangea

Rounded white flower heads cover this smooth hydrangea from early summer into fall. In the breeder's trials it produced two to three times as many as other smooth hydrangeas per season. Hydrangea arborescens FlowerFull® 'BAIful' grows 3 to 4 feet tall and 4 to 5 feet wide in part sun to part shade, hardy from Zone 3 through Zone 8.

The flowers keep coming rather than arriving in a single flush, and the stems are thick enough to carry them upright. The leaves were selected for resistance to the bacterial leaf spot that often marks smooth hydrangeas in humid summers, so they stay dark green through the season.

Smooth hydrangea, Hydrangea arborescens, is native to the eastern United States and is one of the hardiest garden hydrangeas, reliable into Zone 3. It flowers on new wood, forming its buds in spring on the current year's growth, so a hard winter or a late frost does not cost it a season of bloom. Soil pH does not change the flower color.

Cut the stems back to about 18 inches in late winter or early spring, before new growth starts, and the plant flowers the same summer on the growth that follows. Leaving that framework rather than cutting to the ground builds thicker stems to carry the flower heads. Smooth hydrangeas need steady moisture, tolerate wet ground, and do best with shade from midday on where summers run hot. Deer do browse them.

Wider than tall, it fills a foundation bed, a low hedge, or a mass planting.