welcome to Hort tube my name is Jim Putnam and this is a limelight hydrangea this is the beautiful lime green and white flowering limelight hydrangea limelight hydrangea is a hydrangea paniculata which are sometimes referred to as tree hydrangeas and you can see behind me that this one is maybe 14 feet right now so they get quite large they're listed on a lot of websites to 6 to 8 feet in height and that's probably true that you can keep them in that height range but if you let it go over time it's going to become a small tree hydrangea paniculata is including limelight are extremely cold hardy these things grow in the vast majority of the United States they'll grow all the way up to zone 3 and down to zone 9 limelight is very fast growing once it's established it will probably put on 2 perhaps even three feet of growth in a single season before it flowers in the summer unlike the big leaf hydrangeas hydrangea paniculata czar definitely Sun loving plants I've got these two limelight hydrangeas planted an absolute full Sun they bake from early in the morning until late in the evening lamb light could be pruned into a small tree on the corner of your foundation I don't think you'd probably want this plant along your foundation it would end up covering up the windows you'd have to do so much pruning on it it wouldn't flower very much you'd constantly be pruning the flower buds off lime light makes a fantastic border plant and I think that's really the best use for this plant I've used these two for that purpose right here this has created a nice wind barrier and even when they lose their leaves in the winter time they're actually still quite thick so the main features of limelight hydrangeas is they start off with these lime green flowers which over time become very very bright white and it creates a two-tone color across the plant these right here I don't know if you're going to see that directly in here these have been tree formed and are now in the twelve to fourteen foot range it can be pruned off from the top in the wintertime these could probably be cut in half and be kept as a much smaller shrub these bloom on new growth which i think is fantastic because you can prune them in the winter time the other thing about them blooming on new grow is I can go in here and break off some of these flowers and I likely have enough time for this branch to actually give me two new branches and flower again before the end of summer I've included videos in the description of this video for planting woody trees and shrubs you're really just not going to have a problem with limelight as long as you don't put it in an area that's going to stay wet all the time or mound the mulch up on the base of them over time that could be an issue super easy plant just follow some basic best practices planting instructions and you should be fine hydrangea paniculata is as a group are very drought tolerant once they're rooted into the ground but with that said this thing's in full bloom in early to mid summer and if it wasn't getting some additional water when it was in full bloom it would almost certainly start to lose some leaves you'd see a lot of yellow leaves on this it'd be shedding the flowers would be much smaller perhaps so during that period of time in late spring or early summer if your area becomes dry you'll want to drag a water hose over to these and give them some extra water I fertilize these lime lights in the late winter right before they started to wake up with just a slow-release fertilizer it's about midsummer now and it should be running out it was a fertilizer that last three to four months that's kind of ideal I want the fertilizer running out by midsummer so they can start to wind down and go dormant naturally lime light could be pruned pretty much any time you would need to prune it I don't think you would hurt it probably the best time to do severe pruning on it would be in the late winter or early spring before it starts to wake up the nice thing about hydrangea paniculata is they bloom on new growth and not on old growth like the other varieties of hydrangeas so you can prune these in the winter time and still have flowers you can't do that on hydrangea macrophylla Zoar the big leaf hydrangeas that you can do some additional pruning pruning on it during the season and after these blooms start to fade in midsummer in my area I could actually take these off and I probably have enough time for this thing to flush back out and bloom one additional time in September or October in my area we really don't see a lot of pests on limelight hydrangeas there's a little leaf spot on this and I could find a few places where some things have chewed on it just not that big of a deal it seems to resist most of those types of problems it would be susceptible to root rot if you put it in an area that just stayed wet all the time I think that would not be advisable hydrangea paniculata are definitely more deer resistant than big leaf hydrangeas big leaf hydrangeas they'll absolutely eat them to the ground they tend to stay away from these a little more but if deer are a big concern for you you might only plant one of these and just see how it goes before you put a lot of them in at one time so what are you waiting for even you can grow the stunningly beautiful very long flowering limelight hydrangea thank you for watching my video and if it was helpful please hit the like button and subscribe to my channel for future videos also comment below with any questions you have about hydrangeas thanks for watching you