How do you get Hydrangeas to be vibrant and unique in color?

Question

There are hydrangeas at the end of our road and the flowers are lilac and pink colored. How did they get the different colors like that? Do you buy a multicolored hydrangea, or is it something with the soil?

Answer 1

Hydrangea colors are a result of your soil type. Acid soils produce blue flowers while more alkaline soil causes them to be pink. Sometimes you might get a mixture or somewhere in between. You can play around with the colors by adding ammendments to the soil. You can add aluminum sulfate to get bluer flowers or lime to get pinker flowers. This is easier to do with hydrangeas in pots than it is with those in the ground.

Answer 2

This article may be old but it has good info about soil pH and hydrangea colour.

http://www.thegardenhelper.com/Hydrangea...

Answer 3

As others have said you can change the color of some hydrangeas by changing the pH of the soil it grows in. However, some hydrangeas will not change color. The color is a bit like litmus paper -- in acid soils they tend to be pinker and in alkaline soils they tend to be bluer.

White hydrangeas, which you have, will stay white whatever you do to the soil. There is no pigment to be affected by the pH. It really depends on the hydrangea variety. And sometimes growers will graft two different colored plants together or grow two different plants close together so it looks as if one plant has two different colors of flowers.

Answer 4

LIME!  Will change the color from blue to purple!

Answer 5

Hydrangeas change color due to the acidity(pH) in the soil.  If you want the blue color one, you need to keep your soil acidic.  If  your soil is sweet, meaning the soil is alkaline, flower will be more on the pink side.  Hydrangea change its color as it fade, but there is a kind called, "Kaleidoscope", which changes color from pink to dark red as time goes by.  Unfortunately, white kind won't change color, since there are no color pigment on it.