“A dead hydrangea is as intricate and lovely as one in bloom. Bleak sky is as seductive as sunshine, miniature orange trees without blossom or fruit are not defective; they are that.”
-Toni Morrison
While visiting my grandmother in Fair Lawn, New Jersey as a young boy, I never quite appreciated her Antiqued Hydrangeas. “Pompa” as we called her was an amazing gardener. On the shady side of her house, away from her rose and tulip beds, were a couple big hydrangeas. One was the classic white and the other had blossoms that varied from blue to pink and purple. Perhaps she was putting aluminum sulphate in the soil to influence the colors? More than likely, since though you couldn’t tell from outward appearances, Pompa was very much interested in the science of gardening.
We would usually visit her in mid-July on a typical summer vacation road trip, our whole family packed in the car for the drive down from Rhode Island. She would have great big cut hydrangea arrangements on her upright piano, and on her fireplace mantel. Usually the stems were placed in a thick chunky cut glass vase. The white and blue contrast really brightened up her modest living room.
Our family would usually return to share Thanksgiving with Pompa, since my grandfather, Rudolph, had passed away years before. I recall walking into her living room thinking, “Jeez, Pompa hasn’t changed the flowers since last time we were here.” As a child, I must have totally missed the fact that these, weren’t the same blooms, they were one of the most desired flowers in the industry, the Antiqued Hydrangea.
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| Two Antiques, our Hydrangeas and Pompa's copy of "Garden Flowers in Color" which she purchased in 1951. |
Antiquing is the process where a blossom loses it's bold summer color and fades into a mellow rainbow of different tones, shades and hues. No two antiques are the same, each waning in its own special way. At this point most flowers wilt and die, hydrangeas miraculously keep their form and shape, and reinvent themselves for another season.
How does one “antique” a hydrangea? Does this take some special treatment or training? The simple truth is that an antiqued hydrangea blossom is left on the branch and naturally reaches this unique look, nothing but Mother Nature at work here. That said, there are some conditions at our farm in Arcata, California that make for exceptional hydrangeas, which in turn leads to exceptional antiques.
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| Look at the different colors on just one bush. |
In late August, the days get shorter, and the air gets a little drier and chillier here on the Pacific coast. These atmospheric changes precipitate the change in the plant. You will find that hydrangeas grown closer to the equator don’t antique with the same impressive results as ours do, since their day light and weather patterns stay very constant.
Sun Valley can say without exaggeration that we grow some of the largest hydrangea on the market; this is due to our Hydrangea team's expert pruning. There is a very specific time and place to prune a hydrangea so that they grow the XXL blooms that we produce. If I told you the secret, I’d have to kill you, sorry nothing personal.
Our hydrangeas are in demand, and luckily we are ready. J Schwanke, The Flower Expert and Host of Fun with Flowers and J on
uBloom.com, just checked in to get some of our antiques for an upcoming ABC TV series which he will be doing based on the theme of “Color”. I asked J, “Why Sun Valley?”
He replied in with his usual contagious enthusiasm, "Sun Valley is 'KNOCKING it out of the Park' with those CA Grown Hydrangeas... they look Wonderful... and the Colors are Out of this World!!! I can't wait to get my hands on them..."
Look for J to be featuring our antiques, and don’t be shy, get some for
yourself. Once these antiques have reached this stage, they will dry and be beautiful for months to come. Often people pick hydrangea at their peak of color and try to use these for dry arrangements, without success. However, once the flower head has gotten well into antiquing, it should dry easily, and last a long time.
Another interesting fact about hydrangeas is that the colorful petals really aren't the fertile flowers of the plant. In the center of the petals you will see a small ball, this is actually the fertile flower.
Hydrangeas are a pretty amazing plant, their blooms are loved by designers, gardeners and flower experts. However, the hydrangea is really a plant for everybody, not just florist and flower professionals. Anyone who has ever walked by a tall flower laden bush on a warm summer evening, with the rich scent of the blooms drifting on the breeze, knows this perennial favorite. In many parts of the country, the hydrangea blooming signals that summer is in full swing. As the blooms antique, it signals that Labor Day nears, days will be getting shorter and we all better take advantage of those last few weeks of summer.
Get out there!
-Lily
www.tsvg.com
