Cleaning Up Our Hydrangea Bushes



We currently have nine Annabelle Hydrangeas planted in our front yard. In the spring, some folks leave 'em as is, some prune 'em right to the ground, and others (like me) prune 'em just a little. 

Here's how the front five hydrangeas were looking as of yesterday:

Kinda scraggly. I decided they needed a bit of a clean-up. 

I grabbed my new polka-dotted gardening gloves, a rake, some clippers, and a measuring tape (please don't judge me).

First, I raked up all the dead leaves that had blown behind them in the fall. I also removed, by hand, all the scrunched up leaves that were caught in the actual bushes.

Once all the dead leaves were gone I took out my tape measure and clipped each stem back to 20". This gave each bush a nice, rounded appearance. It's also good (according to the internet) to keep some of the older stems so that they can support the newer ones (and of course the very large blooms that will appear later on).

Once I was finished clipping back the stems I added some rich, black soil to build the garden bed back up a bit. The bags were on sale, too. Five for $10.

Here's how the bushes are looking now. I still have to edge the garden but there's only so much a girl can do in one day, right?

I'm so proud that I got all that done in one day. It's a miracle!!!!!!!!!!

Wait a minute, I still have all the side bushes to do. :S 

P.S. I pruned our hydrangeas the exact same way last spring and you can see how they turned out in the picture below. Not too shabby.

(This is an old picture from a previous post.)

When, oh, when is my yard going to look like this again......?