Hydrangea

A native eastern-US deciduous shrub - 'Annabelle' is a sterile-flowered cultivar of smooth hydrangea - with very large white snowball blooms in summer. Blooms on new wood so spring frost cannot destroy the flower display, and serves as the larval host for the hydrangea sphinx moth.

A woody, deciduous flowering shrub in the Hydrangeaceae, native to Japan, China, Korea, and Southeast Asia and long grown as the classic "hortensia" or French hydrangea. NC State Extension describes a rounded shrub 3 to 6 feet tall and wide with large opposite, simple, toothed leaves (4 to 8 inches long) and big rounded mop-head or flat lacecap flower clusters in late spring and summer in white, pink, blue, or purple. Famously, flower color tracks soil chemistry - acidic soils push the blooms blue and alkaline soils turn them pink. It wants protection from hot afternoon sun and steady moisture, making it a mainstay of shaded foundation plantings and woodland borders.

Climbing hydrangea is a large, deciduous woody climber native to Japan, Korea, and Sakhalin in the Russian Far East, ascending trees, rock faces, and masonry via self-clinging aerial rootlets to eventually reach 30 to 50 feet tall. It delivers spectacular mid-summer lacecap flower heads - flat white corymbs up to 10 inches across - exfoliating cinnamon-red bark on mature stems, and clear yellow autumn foliage. The honest catch is its notorious slow establishment: most plants sulk for three to five years before putting on meaningful growth or flowering at all, and once mature the vigorous stems and tenacious aerial rootlets can damage mortar joints, clapboard, and wooden siding if attached to anything other than brick, stone, or robust timber structures.

Mountain hydrangea is a compact, deciduous flowering shrub native to the mountainous regions of Japan and Korea, where it grows in cool, moist, partly shaded conditions - and that cool mountain origin is the honest catch. Hardy through USDA Zone 6 when dormant, the plant breaks dormancy early and its new spring growth is reliably vulnerable to late frosts; a single late freeze in April can destroy an entire season's bloom on wood that would otherwise flower in midsummer. It is smaller and more refined than bigleaf hydrangea, with serrated leaves and distinctive lacecap flowerheads in blue or pink depending on soil pH, making it a graceful focal point for partly shaded borders where consistent moisture can be maintained.

A four-season native shrub of the southeastern United States, where NC State Extension notes it grows wild in moist woods and along stream banks. It is an upright, multi-stemmed deciduous shrub, slow-growing to roughly 4 to 8 feet tall and 4 to 10 feet wide, named for its large, oak-shaped, lobed dark-green leaves. Showy pyramidal 4-12 inch panicles of creamy-white flowers open from late spring into summer and fade to pink and then tan, while the bold foliage turns wine, orange, and mahogany in fall over peeling cinnamon bark. Easy and low-maintenance in organically rich, well-drained soil, it is grown as a specimen, in masses, or as an informal hedge.

The toughest, most cold-hardy, and most sun-tolerant of the common hydrangeas, grown for big cone-shaped (panicle) flower clusters that open creamy white in mid to late summer and age to pink, rose, or tawny tan as the season cools. Because it blooms on new wood, it flowers reliably even after hard winters and can be pruned hard in late winter without losing the show. Native to eastern and southern China, Japan, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands, the species is large - an arching, multi-stemmed, often vase-shaped shrub that can reach the size of a small tree - though most garden cultivars are bred smaller. It wants full sun to part shade and consistent moisture; all parts are toxic if eaten.