different coloured hydrangea's

[Kuffy]

I don't often use the front door to my house which is on the side of the house. So I rarely see the hydrangea's out there. They are planted in the same dirt, which is whatever it was when Adam was a boy. I noticed that I have a pink hydrangea and a blue hydrangea. I tried for a while to get the hydrangea's to turn blue but they remained pink. My testing of the soil was alkaline soil of about 8-9pH.

I just think it is interesting that two plants in the same soil sitting side by side can be different colours. These plants will fill out a little more and the blooms will be much bigger, but then the summer sunshine will come along and ruin it all and turn the green leaves to carbon dust by mid January.

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[Skew ChiDAMN!!]

My folks to have tricoloured hydrangeas; pink, white and blue. Sometimes on the same plant! They used to mix a bit of copper sulphate into the soil under some plants and bury small lumps of scrap iron under others to get the effect. I forget which did what, but I think the base colour was the white.

As an aside, over the years I've noticed that when people have a row of hydrangeas alongside a building with a recent extension at one end, the ones closest to the extension are often a different colour. Bit of a giveaway to what the builders did with their small scrap & rubble, eh wot? :D

[Kuffy]

As I said, I did try to make them turn blue by making the dirt more acidic. I think I used sulphur. I have heard that battery acid will do it also. I gave up once I found that the soil is pretty high alkaline. The acidity of the soil allows the plants to take up the manganese or aluminium (forget which is it is), and it is that mineral which makes the flowers turn blue. My theory is that one of the many stray cats that roam the area at night must like to take leak on the left hydrangea in the photo. Bloody cats are always ruining one plant or another. But on the plus side, I haven't had issues with mice for the last couple of years :D

[Old-Biker-UK]

They have some really brilliant coloured hydrangeas in Northern France, deep blue and red (image).
Must be something in the soil as we have tried 'stolen' cuttings several times and those that struck reverted to our normal dull colours.
Mark