Audubon® Native Oakleaf Hydrangea Big

A better, all-around, four-season plant would be hard to find. Oakleaf Hydrangea has it all! This exceptional Accent is loved by landscape designers for its fresh white summer flowers, its bold green leaves that turn burgundy in fall, and its chunky tan stems with papery, peeling bark. It is loved by wildlife, too! The masses of tiny flowers create a frenzy among honey bees, bumblebees, and those gentle bee-lookalikes, hoverflies. Songbirds may nest in Oakleaf Hydrangea’s branches, and in the fall and winter, they may return to feed on its seeds. Loved by all!

A true southern belle, Oakleaf Hydrangea is native only as far north as Tennessee; its range then extends southward to Louisiana and Florida. Most plentiful in Mississippi and Alabama, it is also the state wildflower of Alabama. Despite its southern roots, however, Oakleaf Hydrangea is surprisingly cold-hardy (it tolerates temperatures to 20 below zero), and so it has become popular in other parts of the country as well. Its many ornamental attributes have earned it a place in gardens of many regions and of many types, both formal and informal.

Oakleaf Hydrangea’s big, cone-shaped flower clusters are composed of two kinds of blooms—the sterile flowers are large and showy and only exist to catch the eye of pollinators, while the tiny, fertile flowers provide the nourishment that bees need. Many modern selections of Oakleaf Hydrangea feature mainly sterile flowers. What we offer here is the “unimproved” form, with lots of fertile blooms to feed the pollinators.