Hydrangea Beautensia™ Spike: New Ruffled Hydrangea From Crocus

Attractive ruffled florets bring a fresh new style to hydrangeas, pale backs to the petals add a little extra flair, pale green buds complete a harmonious pastel look. Flowers can be pink or blue, reaches a manageable 4ft/1.2m in height. New hydrangeas seem to be arriving with increasing speed. This is partly fueled by their increasing popularity as cut flowers, and the cut flower trade is always looking for new and interesting varieties.

At the same time nurseries and gardeners are realising that while hydrangeas are amongst the easiest shrubs to grow, and give many months of colour, for years they didn’t really change that much.

But last year I mentioned three new hydrangeas with fine new features –Invincibelle Spirit, Fantasia and Expression – and here’s another: Beautensia™ Spike ('Spike').

Its highlight is the ruffled summer and autumn flowers. Each floret is very prettily waved revealing, at the edges, the paler colouring of the backs of the petals. And each floret also pales prettily towards the centre while the buds and opening flowers have a greenish tint.

The result is a delightful harmony of colours – in pink or in blue. As with other hydrangeas of this type, on limey soils the flowers will be pink while on lime free soil they’ll be blue. Or you can treat them with hydrangea colourant to make sure that they’re blue.

Reaching about 4ft/1.2m high and as much across, Beautensia™ Spike is easy to grow in full sun or partial shade in any reasonably fertile garden soil that is not waterlogged or parched.

Hydrangea Beautensia™ Spike (‘Spike’) is available from Crocus.

Source: RHS - Hydrangea Beautensia™ Spike: New Ruffled Hydrangea From Crocus

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