Pruning Hydrangeas

I put a picture of the sad peewee hydrangea that was in the garden here.

                                      

I thought perhaps that it was done for, but one side of it did produce a number of pretty blossoms this summer. And when digging in that bed, I kept bumping into its root system which is massive. I thought surely it has the will to survive.

So a lot of reading online and watching videos has convinced me that there is something that can be done for this poor tree. One of the gardeners at Gerbers told me that it will flower on the side where it has sun and certainly that appears to be so. The left side of the tree is practically dead, although it did make some new shoots this season.

I had thought of just cutting it right down to about 18" from the soil, but I have read that will make for weak branches and smaller blossoms. So I will take the pruning more slowly and will wait until early spring to do it. That way, I can be sure that I am not cutting off the next year's blossoms. So it will get a hard cutting back next March/April but I will be cautious and not hack it back so severely that it can't recover.

Great advice on this site
http://simpledecoratingtips.com/2015/05/01/tips-to-prune-a-peegee-hydrangea/

I found the site by putting in a search for hydrangea tree half dead and then clicked on the image that looked as sad as mine. That brought me to the above website which is full of good advice on landscape ideas.