With parts of the UK set to sizzle with temperatures reaching 31C, gardeners are being urged to take adequate precautions to protect their flowers and plants. Hydrangeas are a popular flower in British gardens which are blooming at this time of year, however, they do not bode well when set beneath the scorching sunshine during heatwaves.

Though hydrangeas love sunshine, they also like shade where possible. While we humans can relocate to a shady patch when the sun is too much for us, your planted hydrangeas can not.

However, Kelly Lehman, a gardening expert from Cranberry Fields Flower Farm, has shared two key tips that she follows during a heatwave to look after her hydrangeas.

Kelly posted a video to her YouTube channel during a heatwave, where she explained: “I need to take some drastic measures right now to keep these hydrangeas going strong.”

Two of her main tips include some specific instructions around watering and deadheading.

Watering

As is the case with all plants, it goes without saying that watering is important at all times of year. However, during periods of high heat, it’s crucial to ensure your flowers are getting plenty of water.

Typically, hydrangeas like to be watered anywhere between once and three times a week, but when the thermometer rises, you will need to increase your usual schedule.

“The best advice I can give you for watering hydrangeas is always water them at the base in the morning,” said Kelly.

“I always do that and I make sure I don’t overwater them because sometimes you can overwater hydrangeas. So you just put your finger in the ground, if the soil feels moist leave it alone. If the soil is dry give it a good soaking at the base.”

As a little added tip, to stop flowers from burning and becoming “crispy”, Kelly recommends a little shower of water over the blooms at the beginning of the day. Though this is not usually advised, Kelly explained there is a reason why she does this during heatwaves.

“I do find that even when I do that watering in the morning when these temperatures are day-after-day I am still seeing signs of this burn up.

“So to prevent this I will do an overhead watering early in the morning because at this point the temperatures are scorching and even though I am watering at the base these flowers are going to burn up.

“I need to do an overhead watering only because we have this crazy heatwave and this is the only time that I will do that but I’ll make sure I only do it in the morning.”

Deadheading

In some cases, even if you follow a strict watering schedule, some of your hydrangea flowers will still burn up or turn crispy. If you have noticed this, then it’s a good idea to deadhead.

“I am going to get rid of some of these blooms that have gotten super crispy but instead of just cutting them off, you will notice that sometimes with the blooms that got a little crispy on the top a lot of times on the bottom, they still have beautiful colour,” she said.

“So what I am going to do is clip off some of these flowerheads, but I am going to wind up making arrangements out of them because if I can get five or six flowerheads it makes for a beautiful arrangement.

“And what I will do is I will hide this part that’s all kind of crispy and I’ll put that towards the inside of the arrangement. So when I have them in a base it’s going to be with the beautiful side facing out and the crispy side facing inside.”

Deadheading your hydrangeas will help to alleviate some of the stress on the plant.

“It’s not going to have to support all the weight of these heavy blooms that are just passed their prime, and it also tells the last that it doesn’t have to worry about doing the work of having the flowerhead go to seed,” Kelly explained.