undoubtedly require regular irrigation. The best way to accomplish this is with a drip irrigation system. Do not use overhead sprinklers, as this will enormously increase floral and leaf diseases. Alternatively, water by hand at the foot of the plant. Just as with roses, try to wet the foliage as little as possible. Monitor your hydrangeas' water needs carefully; once allowed to wilt, they scorch easily and take a long time to recover and look good once more. One of the difficulties with all this watering is that in many parts of the country, the water is alkaline. This raises the soil pH, and, well, you can imagine the consequences. The advantage of watering by hand is that you can add a couple of tablespoons of vinegar to your watering can. This simple means of acidification also works very well for hydrangeas grown in pots. For automatic irrigation, acidifying agents are available that can be injected into the system. Besides how to turn bigleaf hydrangeas blue, the biggest source of confusion is pruning. This especially true in the Midwest, where gardeners are used to growing Hydrangea arborescens, a plant that flowers on new (current year's) wood and which is best pruned to ground level in early spring. Midwestern gardeners treating bigleaf and serrata hydrangeas the same way will be dismayed to find that their plants produce no flowers. That's because these species produce flower buds on the previous year's wood. So, if you prune them down in early spring, you've