I finally pruned the Hydrangea paniculata 'Limelight' at the end of the Asian Collections parking area. We pruned it hard once last year. "Once" is the operative term here. When you prune these plants hard, they take all the energy in their root system and expend it all on growing one shoot from every pruning point. Since they flower on new wood, you often get, as we did, relatively slender four foot shoots with huge flower trusses at the tip. The weight of the inflorescence pulls the shoot down and you end up with an odd looking shrub. Usually we go in after the first pruning before the new shoots can elongate too much and "tip them". If we didn't wait too late to do that we still get plenty of flowers the same year.
Anyway, I drove around with the pieces all afternoon until Mariya observed that they would make a nice dry arrangement. And they did. The scale is a little extreme though.
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