Selecting Hydrangeas for Your Tulsa Garden

For good reason hydrangeas are one of the most popular landscape shrubs. These beautiful, blooming shrubs are known for producing ball-shaped clusters of small flowers nice mix of colors like pink, blue, purple, and white. Gardeners in Tulsa often love them for their rich blooms that seem to blanket a garden with color.

But with the sometimes extreme and often inconsistent Oklahoma weather, life can be difficult for hydrangeas here. They commonly need a great deal of care to survive the intense Oklahoma heat. So, which varieties of these gorgeous shrubs seem do best in Oklahoma you ask?


There is a reblooming kind hydrangea that blossoms every few weeks in the summer and fall; known as The Endless Summer hydrangea, it can endure the winter weather in Oklahoma better than other varieties and can bloom on both new and old wood. These do best in a partly-shaded area that gets morning sun and afternoon shade. These hydrangeas, like other varieties, need  rich, moist soil that drains well. While they need a lot of water, they don’t do well in soggy or constantly wet areas.

Another kind of hydrangea known as, The Annabelle hydrangea is said to be one of the hardiest with some of the longest blooms.

Examiner.com tells us, “With adequate moisture, ‘Annabelle’ laughs at the Oklahoma summertime,” “Further, because ‘Annabelle’ flowers on new growth, she is never badly hurt by late freezes.”

Annabelles generally bloom from early June through September in Oklahoma. These beautiful landscape shrubs bloom to a bright white before they turn to light green again. The Annabelle is seen to be more drought-tolerant than others and has great disease resistance.
The Oakleaf hydrangeas is also said to be an easier hydrangea to cultivate. Instead of the ball-shaped or “mophead” flower type, the Oakleaf has a unique cone-shaped clusters of white flowers and oak-like leaves that turn a beautiful reddish-purple in the fall.

Because all of these hydrangeas require moist, rich soil, Englishgardens.com recommended adding fertilizer to them during summer while they’re growing. And the vast majority, if not all hydrangeas, will do better planted in the shade or partial-shade, out of the hot afternoon sun.

For more assistance in landscaping your garden, please contact the Tulsa landscape design specialists at Oklahoma Landscape. We can design and build a landscape with the perfect flowers and shrubs for your home’s architecture and that will thrive in the Oklahoma climate.

Choosing Annuals for Your Tulsa Garden

Many Tulsa gardeners can’t wait until spring when they can get back in to their gardens. A colorful garden of annuals can enhance any landscape. What are annuals and how can you successfully use them to enhance your Tulsa home and landscape?

Annual plants are generally ones that complete their entire growing cycle in a single growing season. They grow from seeds, create foliage, blossom, and then grow seeds and die all in the same year. Perennials, however, bloom year after year, for at least two years, but they can have a fairly short blooming season. Some hardy annuals can act more like perennials and vice versa with perennials depending on the local climate.

Annuals offer a simple way to add interesting color combinations into your Tulsa garden. They are very versatile – they work great in containers, flowerbeds, window boxes, and are ideal for lining a sidewalk.  Because they have such vigorous growth, they provide an instant or close-to-instant way to have a vibrant flower garden. These lively plants provide a showy array and diversity of color, texture, and form.

“There are annuals that are tall, medium, short or climbing; ones that prefer either full sun or partial shade; and those with special virtues, such as delightful fragrance (stock, mignonette, nicotiana) or attractive foliage (caladium, coleus, dusty miller),” Gardener’s Supply Company noted.

How can you select the best annuals for your Tulsa garden?

Planning out the colors and varieties you want along with their environmental needs on paper first can help you have a more attractive and organized garden design. Annuals generally should be planted outside in the spring after any danger of frost has passed.

Annuals that are already in bloom can be purchased at a nursery or garden center in packs and then can be relocated into the outside garden. You can also buy annuals in seed packets and either grow them indoors in late winter or early spring or grow them directly in the garden soil outside, depending on the type of seed. Buying seed packets is less expensive and offers a wider variety of flowers than what you might otherwise find in nursery packs.

Make sure the soil is well-fertilized before planting or transplanting annuals into the garden. Check the nursery or packet instructions for correct spacing of flowers to ensure they don’t get overcrowded once they mature. For flowers from nursery packs, gently break up the compounded soil/roots so that the roots will be able to grow freely in the soil.

Annuals and perennial flowers can be combined to create a colorful and engaging garden for your Tulsa home. Call Oklahoma Landscape’s horticulture experts for more details on planting your spring garden.