Lets Dance Starlight Hydrangea

Cultivar name: ‘Lynn’. It’s the breeding breakthrough we’ve been waiting for! Just 2 to 3 feet high and wide, this container-sized Hydrangea blooms on both old and new wood, giving northern gardeners a lovely season and southern and western gardeners 2 glorious bloomtimes every year. But that’s not even the innovation: it’s that the blooms aren’t the usual mophead, “summer snowball” rounded type. They’re the far more unusual “lacecap” variety, with an outer ring of large open florets circling a core of tiny “closed” flowers! Now there is absolutely no barrier to growing Hydrangea wherever you live, for this super-compact variety thrives in containers that you can bring indoors for winter!

You will love these blooms. The petals are triangular, for an exotic sort of look, and they will be colored with a rosy pink or deep blue, depending on the pH of your soil. They surround a big bouquet of inner flowers that may remain fairly green, with flashes of blue or pink. But either way, the big outer petals gradually mature to bright green : the complete opposite of the usual pattern for mopheads, where the flowers start green and then get their “color”!

The foliage is large, toothy, and bright green on this tight little shrub, banking the blooms beautifully. Let’s Dance Starlight really knows how to fill a container, with giant blooms and big leaves tumbling from all sides. Of course, it doesn’t have to go in containers (except north of zone 5, for winter protection), and it makes a fine foreground planting for the foundation, shrub border, and larger Hydrangea varieties. If you like lacecap Starlight, you must grow it among its cousin mophead Moonlight.

Let’s Dance Starlight is the ideal Hydrangea for zones 5 and 6, where many other varieties suffer in late spring frosts. In these climates, even if a late frost should freeze the buds of the first early- to midsummer blooms, a second set will appear in summer for late season flowering. That’s the beauty of reblooming Hydrangea: it guarantees you at least one fabulous season every year!

Let’s Dance Starlight is a Proven Winner, which means exactly what it sounds like. These high-performing varieties have been thoroughly tested in trial gardens all around the world, and their health, vigor, and beauty have proven unparalleled.

This mini shrub thrives in moist soil in full sun in the North, partial shade farther south and west. The “Hydra” part of its name indicates its love of water, but it needs good soil drainage too, so it is not a shrub for boggy or wet soils. Keep it well watered, especially during the summer heat, and it will grow and bloom for decades. Certain to become your favorite shrub, this versatile little beauty deserves a special place in your landscape! Zones 5-9.