With our summer heat seemingly at its peak, there's one sure-fire way to stay cool. Try lying in the shade of a tree or covered patio, misters or fan on, and enjoying the shade-loving hydrangeas. If you're a home gardener of any experience, you already know that impatiens are a shade-lover's dream. And they're at full bloom through summer.
Hydrangeas feature their huge globe-shaped flowers in pink, white, red and blue.
Their biggest prerequisite is shade or filtered sun, and plenty of water on our hottest days. Besides providing an abundance of color in shady areas, hydrangeas fill an important niche in the garden. For instance, as shrubs go, they bloom for a long time - literally all summer. They're versatile in that you can keep them pruned to manageable size or let them go to rather gigantic proportions. Hydrangeas are also deciduous in that they lose their leaves in winter.