Climbing hydrangea, Hydrangea petiolaris - 6 tips to care

Climbing Hydrangeas are pleasingly robust ornamental plants, because of lush growth with little care they have once found their way from their homeland Asia to Europe. They are useful in many locations and are extremely decorative. Letter hydrangeas are easy to maintain, frugal and so hardy after a start-up phase that they can even green the facades. Then they have to be called to raison from time to time, but that will take years:

The locations for climbing hydrangeas

Climbing hydrangeas have developed in forest areas where they have received too little light from above - which gave them the idea to climb towards the light. The location in the garden should correspond to this origin:

• Bright to shady location, like shaded by large trees
• Climbing hydrangeas do not want to get the direct sun
• Especially no hot midday sun
• Too much wind can bother them
• The soil should be loose and humus rich
• And have a neutral to slightly acidic pH

Tip:
It is often recommended to lower the pH of the soil to 4.0 to 4.5 to achieve a blue color of the flowers. If the climbing hydrangea climbs up the house, you should first discuss this with a construction expert, who guarantees that your house wall does not crumble when acidic matter is constantly being poured on the floor. The alternative is to plant the climbing hydrangea in a bucket, here acid soil disturbs anyone. In the bucket climbing hydrangeas, however, should quickly "rumzicken" if the smallest bit of care is not right.

Care of climbing hydrangeas, step by step

Climbing hydrangeas have some claims, but they are easy to fulfill:

1. Sufficient water
Climbing hydrangeas climb up to 6 m with the aid of a climbing aid, but without a trellis they become hemispherical shrubs of about 2 m in height and width. In both cases a lot of leaf mass, if from May flowers come to it, climbing hydrangeas need a lot of water. But please no waterlogging, that does not tolerate any plant.

The flowering can take years in climbing hydrangea years. Even unmotivated blooming breaks with the best care should not be unusual, but the foliage is also chic.

2nd law a lot of nutrients
Nutrients need the climbing hydrangea in the summer months quite a lot, from the start of the growing season (usually April) you should fertilize the climbing hydrangeas every two weeks until August into (see, in the article "Hydrangea fertilize: when and with what" >

3. Winter protection as a young plant
As I said, climbing hydrangeas are quite bitchy, but this is observed in some living beings who want to go high, probably they just have to focus too much on growing ... means for young climbing hydrangea, that they should be wrapped up in the winter. To the roots (twigs, bark mulch, which also lowers too high pH values) and maybe even in UV-permeable foil wrapping, if the first winter, the young plant caught particularly cold.

4. Sometimes pruning
Climbing hydrangeas in the first three years just to be allowed to grow, which strengthens them and lets them survive winter cold better. Some things will still be removed from the beginning, more and more:

• In the winter dead shoots are always cut away in spring
• Damaged shoots and unwanted ones that grow completely across, too
• From year 4 you can cut back the young shoots annually, which favors the growth of the main shoots and the branching
• This pruning takes place immediately after flowering, as the climbing hydrangea begins the flowering plant in the autumn of the previous year
• Then the faded flowers are cut away
• But you do not have to do that, climbing hydrangeas do not have to be cropped until they're over your head (nonsense, that's what they're supposed to do, so if they grow somewhere you do not want them to be).
• When they are outgrowing, they must and can be slowed down: cut away, which is too much
• If necessary, the whole plant can be cleared, the oldest shoots are cut down to the ground

5. Possibly trellis help
Climbing hydrangeas belong to the so-called self-climbers, they climb with their own adhesive roots. Nevertheless, a climbing aid is recommended if a climbing hydrangea is supposed to green a certain area (a facade), because then you can pull it much better in the shape in which you want it.

6. Cutback on the trellis
If the climbing hydrangea is to climb the façade on a cable system (see the tips), it must be regularly limited from a certain age. Otherwise, so much plant mass will develop that the trellis can eventually no longer bear the weight of the plant. Above all, the shoots, which grow away from the climbing frame into the open air, form an overweight to the outside and have to go away.

Tip:
Trellis is not the same as a trellis aid, every climbing plant needs the trellis that best supports its "climbing type", but at least hampers its development. In the case of the climbing hydrangea, this is a rope system that provides pressure-relief and leads to its skeleton (to be found in facade greening companies, often as finished kits).