Widely acclaimed for their striking colors and showy blossoms, hydrangeas welcome summer with their signature billowy blooms. Flowering forth in oversize clusters of blue, pink, green, and white, they epitomize the blissful, carefree temperament of the season.
In divine conspiracy with nature, hydrangeas proclaim the gleeful arrival of summer with their enormous bursts of silky petals and a painter’s palette of extraordinary hues. The most charismatic variety of them all, mophead hydrangeas imitate art in this floral-inspired work space with gorgeous shades of blue, deep purple, pink, and lavender.
Whether dried in a basket or with their petals pressed into paper, hydrangeas possess an enduring beauty with each incarnation. Steeped in nostalgia, our first recollection of them perhaps stems from a childhood memory.
Wasn’t there something innately magical about the sheer existence of this bloom—the whimsical shape, the unbelievable size, the hundreds of petals that could be tossed like confetti as we reveled in our summer vacation?
As mysterious as they are beautiful, big-leaf hydrangeas have the ability to change color, depending upon the environment in which they grow—blue if there is aluminum present in the soil, pink if they are deprived of aluminum. Unlike the flamboyant mophead species, lacecap hydrangeas exude a wispy, feminine mystique with their spare and graceful composure.
Photography Marcy Black Simpson
Styling Yukie McLean
“Bold, Beautiful Hydrangeas” can be found on page 48 of the May/June 2010 issue of Victoria.
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