There's a lady in the garden who has just now opened her flowers. She starts off pale green then turns white, then back to green and finally soft beige in the fall. She's Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle'.

The mostly sterile florets form a huge rounded flowerhead up to 12 inches across. No matter how much you adjust the pH, the flowers stay white. There's no blue for acid soil and pink for alkaline where this hydrangea is concerned.

She's a very refined lady with dark green foliage. She's a little stout with a rounded figure, short, as hydrangeas grow, seldom reaching more than 5 feet. In my garden, she's never gotten that tall.

Like all hydrangeas, she likes a good drink now and then. She loves the shade and lights up her little piece of the world without the coarseness of a Viburnum macrocephalum, the Chinese snowball.

Many of the popular older blue Hydrangea macrophyllas lose their flowers if cut late. 'Annabelle' is the opposite. She's deciduous and disappears in the winter. She needs to be cut back to the ground in late winter in order for her huge flowers to set properly.

Her flowers dry beautifully. If your taste leans to a monochromatic scheme indoors, you can just let the flower heads dry to a lovely tan right on the bush and harvest late in the season. If you lean to cream, cut them when they reach their full white color after they have hardened off somewhat. Take them too early and they will wilt. Dry the flower heads upside down out of the sunlight.

Where the pinks and blues can be a bit frowsy in their exuberance, she is a refined and understated lady. She's the string of pearls for your garden.

--Posted by Anne Moore, August 12, 2007--