PeeGee hydrangeas

PEEGEE hydrangea – that’s an odd name. Where did it come from? You can probably guess that it’s not from Brighton or Blackburn, but from across the Atlantic. In fact, it’s derived from the first widely grown variety of this type – Hydrangea paniculata ‘Grandiflora’, so PG/PeeGee.

Originally grown in Japan in the 1860s, it was the first of a simple, easy-to-grow, easy-to-prune hydrangea with cone-shaped summer and autumn flowerheads. The heads feature a mix of small insignificant flowers, and bigger and brighter flowers that give the flowerheads their appeal.

In many varieties the flowers change colour as they mature. This produces intriguing combinations of white, pink, red and green tones, and with