This has been a fabulous year for flowering trees. For me the spring started with a deciduous rhododendron called ‘Cornell Pink’, the first of my blooming trees and shrubs. It looks like an azalea with delicate blossoms that stand out against its leafless grey stems.
Cornell Pink was followed by a variety of azaleas and rhododendrons that continued on until our native rhododendron, the rosebay, bloomed in mid-July.
My Merrill magnolia, always a reliable bloomer, started blooming around April 25th. That’s a few days later than normal, but its full double white blossoms delighted me for a couple of weeks.
Apples and crabapples put on a great display this year, too. Trees not only had lots of blossoms, it seemed to me that the blossoms lingered on the branches. Most of the time the weather was neither too hot nor too cold.
Then there were the lilacs, starting with early ones in mid-May and continuing on though June. A favorite of mine is an extraordinarily lush hybrid that always blooms two weeks after our ordinary lilacs. It was named after Harvard botanist Donald Wyman. It has deep purple buds that open to pink-purple blossoms. Last but not least came the tree lilacs, tall, white and fragrant. They bloomed when all the others had finished and put on a terrific show.
Now it’s August, the month when most hydrangeas look their best. As a boy, I didn’t know the name “Hydrangea”, so I thought of them as “snowball bushes” or “cemetery bushes”. The blossoms of the common PeeGee hydrangea are big clusters of tiny white blossoms that vaguely resemble snowballs. And the cemetery part? I guess there were some hydrangeas in every cemetery I’d ever visited.
Hydrangeas are great plants, and although they like rich, moist, well drained soil, they’re not fussy and will grow and bloom almost anywhere. But there is an exception: here in northern New England those beautiful blue hydrangeas that are so successful in warmer parts of the country often do not do well. They survive, but their flower buds often get killed by our cold winters and it takes a long time to get blossoms.
About 10 years ago a cold-hardy blue hydrangea called “Endless Summer” was introduced with great fanfare. So I planted them – twice - but neither effort produced the promised bountiful blooms. So now I refer to them as “Endless Disappointment” instead of "Endless Summer." If you have one that’s thriving but the blossoms are not the bright blue you crave, scratch some soil acidifier or garden sulfur in around it, and next year they should be bluer.
As I get older, I appreciate flowering trees and shrubs more. They’re survivors, producing beauty year after year with very little help from me. And the gnarly stems of old lilacs near abandoned cellar holes are a testament to someone’s desire for beauty, even in the hardest of times.
