Bed & Breakfast

notes from the Hydrangea Society

   On October 16, 2000, the Mendocino Coast of California Hydrangea Society held its final outdoors meeting of the year. There were only four of us present (Garla, Julie, Mary Ellen and Marion) but nevertheless we managed to deal with all the items on our agenda.

l. Visit Marion's garden where we looked at all her hydrangeas and noted the colour variances, talked about the mildew problem, had a quick lesson in pruning and attempted to identify some unnamed varieties.

2. Fertilize, water and discuss the hydrangeas in our demonstration garden all of which were kindly donated by Bob Boddy. We were disappointed that he could not attend the meeting. We weeded, fertilized the blues with aluminum sulphate and the pinks with flower of oyster shell and watered it all in. What a difference! We have isolated them into three groups; blues, pinks and whites. The soil in Mendocino is definitely more neutral than anything so our attempts in adjusting the colours are purely experimental. We worked in the sunshine, ate our sandwiches and Julie made a plan of the whole area, which I hope to have up on the website during the winter so that we can all plot the progress of our experimental garden.

3. Visit Mary Ellen's garden to discuss her hydrangeas and do some pruning. She is fortunate to have a wonderful large semi-shaded garden and has quite a nice collection, some of which she has inherited from the previous owner that we will attempt to identify as we go along. In our mild coastal climate pruning is always the big issue. At Mary Ellen's garden and mine we have been extremely drastic, really taking the plants down by about half. By not pruning last winter as it was so mild our plants had become "leggy" with lots of small blooms rather than fewer larger ones. Hopefully we have not cut off all next year's blooms! Only time will tell.

All in all we had a lovely day out in the sunshine doing what we love best.
Our next meeting will be indoors in front of a big fire to browse our hydrangea catalogues. I will keep you posted.

If you want to be happy for a few hours get drunk. If you want to be happy for a weekend get married. If you want to be happy for a week butcher a pig. If you want to be happy for all your life long BECOME A GARDENER
(especially a gardener of hydrangeas).

Happy gardening.
         Marion

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