Annoying bright pink hydrangea

[Beachtastic]

I made the foolish error of ordering loads of plants online when overexcited about having a garden at last after a few years living without one.

This hydrangea has just come into bloom and is a solid bright pink - that boring flat pink that hydrangeas can be. Nothing like the photo.

I now see that the description does mention "pink" but am not sure if that has changed since I placed the order last December.

Contacted Gardening Express about this and they have replied saying that I should adjust the pH of the soil using a hydrangea colourant. I know you can do that, but am I wrong for thinking there is no way it would ever look like the plant in their photo?

www.gardeningexpress.co.uk/hydrangea-macrophylla-gertrud-glahn

Oh please don't incite my murderous tendencies towards this poor innocent plant 😂

To be honest, I think I planted it in the wrong spot anyway. I sort of pretended it wouldn't grow all that big, but I knew I was fibbing to myself. I'm going to dig it up and pot it, and conduct all sorts of ruthless experiments to see if I can persuade it to sing and dance the way I want it to. If it refuses to play along, I'm going to sneak out one night under cover of dark and plant it somewhere along a public footpath 😎

We just bought 3 hydrangeas from them that are a breath from death. I would get rid and start again and give the company a wide berth

You mean the photo on the Gardening Express site, that tricked me into buying a big pink pom-pom?! Well, I am not sure. If you Google images for "Hydrangea macrophylla Gertrude Glahn" (which is what this is supposed to be, though I have my doubts), the only image that comes up looking like that is... you guessed it, on the Gardening Express website!

From my experience of their other plants, I think it's a bit of a lucky dip with them and I seem to be lucky to have received an actual hydrangea!

Other mentions online have a whole spectrum of photos, and descriptions that vary widely including one describing it as a pale pink or blue depending on soil type. No way is this a pale pink, unless I can add colourblindness to gardening incompetence 😜

My dad put iron filings on the soil by our hydrangeas to make them red.

As I understand it the alkali soils give a red colour and the acid soils blue.

I tried for two years to turn my hydrangea blue by watering it with a dissolvable compound from the garden centre. It didn't work.
All the hydrangeas around here are red so the soil must be strongly alkali !

I can’t give advice as I’ve not attempted to change a hydrangea but I empathise, I’ve just bought a rose that was supposed to be peachy/apricot and turns out to be fluorescent orange!

I'm definitely giving the company a wide berth. I also ordered a hydrangea aspera "Hot Chocolate" from them... I mean, look at it, gorgeousssssssss!!!! 🤩😍

Except... it's not. It's a spindly little stalk with some sad twisted leaves hanging off it. I have a sort of "A&E" department in the garden where struggling plants receive an extra dose of TLC and will be trying a foliar treatment with liquid seaweed in a last-ditch effort to revive them.

I can see the public footpaths round here becoming quite overplanted in the near future!

Ugh, it's so frustrating isn't it. But as a PP said, if you're in a hard-water area the watering might be enough to tilt the balance in favour of pink. Have you tried collecting rainwater instead? I'm going to give that a whirl, too.

Oh, how disappointing. But I love a fluorescent orange rose! That's what my "Joro" bare-root was supposed to look like. Only it's ... bright pink 😞

What is it with bright pink!!!!!!!!

@Beachtastic i did buy it from the reduced shelf in B&Q so not to big an investment but its just a bit “tropical” for my colour scheme.

I'm a bit of a bargain-hunter too. I think that's been my downfall!

Children started a graveyard around the pink hydrangea. Departed gerbils, hamsters, dead things that the cat had caught. It bloomed a gorgeous blue after that.

I love this 🤣

That sounds a bit labour-intensive to me, I'm not quite ready to start slaughtering small animals 🤣 Let's wait and see what miracles I can conjure up with chemicals first!

They change a lot by seasons. Look at Aluminium sulphate or coffee grounds to change it blue.

They also change a lot depending on weather so it might not be as flat pink next year.

My DM has two 30+ year old hydrangeas (they're older than me...). They're currently pink, but they have also been blue! She doesn't do a thing with them and never has, so yours may well change colour by itself anyway.

Here’s a side-by-side of a cheap Lidl hydrangea that lives in a pot - 2023 on the left, 2025 on the right. The difference in colour is just down to whether I bothered adding aluminium sulphate. On the left, I gave it a moderate amount. On the right, nothing - it got neglected thanks to a house move and renovations. Both were watered with mains water in a hard water area.

I like that mix of pink and purple (Nantucket vibes as per my other pic!), but if I use more aluminium sulphate, I can get it fully purple or blue. Your hot pink hydrangea absolutely will change colour if you start adding it, just don’t expect miracles this year.

From what I’ve read and seen myself, you need to start adding the aluminium sulphate in autumn, or late winter at the latest, so that the plant can take up aluminium before buds start forming. I tried adding it in mid-summer once and while it did take the edge off the hot pink, it just turned into a sort of moody, greyish pink — definitely not the purple I was hoping for. You might get a few nicer purple-ish blooms in autumn if you start now, but real results probably won’t show until next year.
As mentioned by previous posters, the tap water gradually pushes the soil pH up, which makes it harder for the plant to absorb aluminium, so rainwater is better. I believe pH needs to stay under 5.5 for blue or purple flowers.

@NeedABoat Thank you so much for sharing the results of your magnificent experiment!

I will try to be patient (and will update next year, if I remember to!) 😀

Mind you, I quite like the sound of a "moody, greyish pink" so I can see myself snipping open that aluminium sulphate over the weekend... 😉

i have an annoying pink hydrangea, it was here when we moved in.
huge, unstoppable.
there are some lovely lacy ones around as well.

It's not going to get a chance to do anything "by itself" ... I'm going to be the gardening equivalent of a Jesuit slave master! 😜

I'm actually tempted to quietly turn DM's blue and not say a word!

You need lots of rusty nails. Worked wonders on my mum's hydrangeas (she did actually want them to go blue though.)

I think we must have the same plant!! 🤣 Mine is firmly pink, bar one head which appears to be attempting to change to blue! Mine was also on its notice given it didn't flower at all last year!

When I was a kid in primary school we used to do this thing and change the hydrangeas from pink to blue then to pink again each year by adding acid or alcholei to the soil. They were in huge containers.

If it didn't flower at all last year, you have more patience than me! I'd have been out there beating it with a stick 😂🌞

I have a dedicated thread to the fucker!
It's done me proud this year. I pruned it HARD in the Spring.