nature, Photography

September 5’s Friday Fleurday

36 Comments

I posted about colour-shifting hydrangeas last week but since they’re so beautiful and in the middle of their annual costume change, I’m visiting the same topic yet again but this time regarding a different type of hydrangea.

June 23, 2025

An hydrangea that shifts from red to purple, blue or purplish-blue and back to pink or red again is a “Bigleaf” hydrangea that is reacting to soil ph levels. In one of the city parks there’s one of those; it puts on a magnificent colour show all summer long and well into autumn.

July 3, 2025

This hydrangea is not to be confused with the “Cardinal” hydrangea that blooms red and stays in that colour zone throughout the summer, though. I posted about that type of hydrangea a couple of years back.

Above and below are a series of pictures from this spring and summer showing its beautiful progression. All photos show the same hydrangea shrub.

July 18, 2025
July 22, 2025
August 18, 2025
August 22, 2025
August 22, 2025. As you can see from these last three photos, different parts of the same shrub were at different levels of transformation at the same time.
August 28, 2025.

When it completes its final metamorphosis back to red I’ll post more pictures of this beautifully variable hydrangea.

Happy Friday.

36 thoughts on “September 5’s Friday Fleurday”

    1. Thank you very much, John. They really are so beautiful and there are so many different kinds of them. Yes, my mother loved them as well and liked to experiment with changing their colours. She was a terrific gardener, too. 😊

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  11. Beautiful pictures. I learnt about these recently when I had gone to the nursery to pick up flowers. In Kenya I’ve seen the ones that change color because of the pH levels in the soil.

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    1. Thank you very much. 😊 Hydrangeas are amazing; there are so many types and they last so well, too. Changing the soil’s pH to manipulate the hydrangeas’ colour is fairly easy to do although you have to have patience as it takes a couple of years to take effect. My mother used to experiment with pH levels to produce multi-coloured hydrangeas. She had a lot of fun with that.

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    1. Thank you very much but I can’t take credit for these since they’re in a city park, but I definitely get to enjoy them! They’re so beautiful. It’s fabulous that you have yours still to come! You should post a couple of photos of them, Leanne. 😊 Cheers.

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    1. Maybe choose a good spot for one and then bury a couple of iron nails in the ground so that you can grow one of these! The colour changes are so beautiful and they last incredibly well. It takes about two years for the soil pH to change enough to affect bloom colour, though.

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