Everlasting™ Amethyst Hydrangea

Do you have a cutting garden? If not, you should consider starting one! Just imagine the armloads of fresh flowers available for you to bring indoors all season to beautify your home!

If you are starting from scratch, we suggest that you begin with an Everlasting® Amethyst Hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla 'Hokomathyst')! This hardy perennial shrub will provide years of gorgeous flowers to fill your vases and bouquets with abundant blooms! Everlasting® Hydrangea holds their huge, hefty blooms straight on sturdy, healthy stems.

The Everlasting® series of Hydrangea was specifically bred for the florist trade in the Netherlands, the land of tulips and flower markets. Everlasting® Amethyst is a stellar addition to this line of shrubs and now you can benefit from them too!

Amethyst is a type of Bigleaf Hydrangea that begins its show in the warm May weather and doesn't let up the impressive display until winter. The long-lasting flower bracts are grooved and textured, and the show starts in late spring or early summer either as pink mopheads with lime green markings, or violet-blue with green markings - depending on your soil pH.

The flowers age to a deeper pink, nearly taking on a reddish tone in alkaline soils, or violet-blues and sky-blue flowers in acidic conditions. Always, each pom-pom bloom bears striking lime-green markings interspersed among the many full petals.

Eventually to the end of their bloom, the giant flowers turn into a delicious lime color that's all the rage in the florist world these days and is a new favorite for modern brides.

The lovely green foliage is lightly quilted, with an interesting toothed edge and large green leaves. Forming a dense yet modest-sized shrub.

How to Use Everlasting® Amethyst Hydrangea In The Landscape

Tough-as-nails but easy-to-grow. Growing equally at home in the garden bed as it does in planters and containers. Making it easy for you to keep their beauty close by for you to enjoy!

Perfectly suited in both formal or informal settings, the handsome green foliage creates a perfect backdrop for the enormous blooms, and also lends its foil when added to the vase. One bloom has all it takes for an impressive arrangement! Flowers and greenery in one easy step!

The easy-going size of Amethyst is perfect to use as a facer planting, easily hiding the bare 'legs' of larger, older shrubs and trees.

Cottage gardens and mixed-shrub borders will welcome this neat and tidy addition, and the colors of the blooms work well with every other flower tone.

Whether creating a low hedge for privacy or lining your walkways and drive to guide visitors along to their destination, this Hydrangea blends right in.

Everlasting® Amethyst is a wonderful foundation plant and holds its own among larger shrubs and trees. Lovely among fine foliage neighbors or plants with much larger leaves, its soothing green leaves even work well with tall ornamental grasses and all sorts of perennials.

A single Everlasting® Hydrangea is a welcome specimen plant and creates an impressive focal point in containers and planters. Looking perfectly at home as a hedge along the edge of your patio, as it is used as a set of sentries flanking your front door. What a welcome for your visitors!

Just the right size to fit into any garden, whether massed in large blocks of lovely waves of color or a solitary specimen tucked away to brighten a shady corner. Amethyst thrives in partial shade and sun, always delivering perfect, healthy blooms all season long.

The flowers are just enormous! You'll have to see Everlasting® Amethyst Hydrangea to believe! Each held aloft by strong and sturdy stems, Amethyst is able to hold its own in wind and storms. Remaining beautiful, full and healthy, whether on the plant or in a vase.

If you don't pick them all for your vase arrangements, the blooms don't just vanish into the summer sun, rather they persist on the plant and change colors as those big mophead flowers age and remain showy right up until freeze!

After the color fades in fall after frost, the flowers lighten into tan or linen colored, dried versions of their former glory and create winter interest on your shrub all autumn and winter or can be brought indoors for your dried floral arrangements and decor!

Craft projects will benefit from the equally large and impressive dried blooms for bouquets and wreaths, and imagine the romantic additions you'll create for your country mantle decor, simplified and refined for formal spaces, or spruce up your shabby-chic style!

#ProPlantTips For Care

As at home in full sun (in cooler climates), as it is in part shade areas, Amethyst will just glow! In the hottest of its preferred growing zones, your Bigleaf Hydrangea will do best in morning sun with plenty of afternoon shade. Any area will benefit from the addition of this impressive shrub. The more sun, the stronger the stems are to support the impressive blooms. In Southern climates, these plants will thank you for dappled shade when the sun and heat can be intense.

Preferring well-drained soils that are consistently moist. Hydrangea like cool roots, and are not especially particular of soil type. Warmer climates can protect their plants better from the heat with a generous application of mulch over the roots to keep them insulated and retain more moisture.

The acidity or alkalinity of your soil will determine the color of your blooms! Becoming fuchsia-pink with lime green or reddish-pink and lime in alkaline soils, or taking on the hushed tones of violets and purples in neutral conditions. Acidic soil brings out the blue hues! No matter the pH, your blossoms retain their lime-green tints and markings!

Pruning is best done in early spring before you see new growth and only to remove old branches, winter-damaged stems, and old flower heads and to help retain a full, bushy plant. You can also renewal prune to remove 4 - 5 year old stems entirely, making room for fresh, vigorous new growth.

Fill your garden and your vases this year with the impressively large blooms this gorgeous plant offers up in an abundance! Plus, keep your garden on its toes with the color-changing hues only Everlasting® Amethyst Hydrangea can offer!

For season-long garden ambiance, order your Everlasting® Amethyst Hydrangea now for bountiful blooms next summer. Call the Hydrangea experts at Nature Hills Nursery and get started on your cutting garden today!