Fling the doors open to the garden and head outside!  Summer is here and what better way to spend your free time than being outside and enjoying the sunshine in your beautiful, flower-filled garden. July is the month when the blooms of the hydrangeas are at their extravagant peak and gardeners everywhere simply cannot believe their luck.  For this reason, Thejoyofplants.co.uk Garden Plant of the Month, with its abundance of blooms, has to be the hydrangea.

The hydrangea is a vigorous and hardy plant and is also extremely popular. 

There are numerous different varieties and colours ranging from white, pink, blue and purple. One of the best known is the delightful 'Annabelle’ (Snowball) variety, with its heart-shaped leaves and large, white, ball-shaped blooms (hence the name!). 

The ‘Paniculata’ Hydrangea, with its gracefully arched branches and clusters of cone-shaped blooms, is also a great garden favourite.  Many varieties, particularly the lace-cap and mopheads, have the fascinating, chameleon-like ability to change colour when adapting to different environments and soils and will often change colour in late summer. 

So, if you want to give your garden that natural, luxurious, extravagant feel, why don’t you fill your borders and terraces with white Annabelles and Paniculatas, or, if you would rather go for a playful and lively kaleidoscope of colour, try composing a combination of multicoloured hyrdrangeas in your borders and containers.

The name Hydrangea, roughly translated, means ‘water barrel’ and this alludes to the hydrangea’s cup-shaped flower and its need for plenty of water. You will know straight away when your plant needs water because it will go limp but it will also immediately spring back to life once its thirst is quashed.

Hydrangeas are even beautiful in Winter. Leave the flowers on the plant and when they are covered in a layer of frost, they become the sparkling jewels of the Winter garden.

For more  information visit www.flowercouncil.co.uk.