Pinky Winky goes Prime

The perfect landscape and pollinator habitat

P inky Winky has gone Prime! One of my all-time favorite hydrangea paniculata varieties, Pinky Winky is now being offered as Prime. This means you can now choose Pinky Winky or Pinky Winky Prime hydrangea for your landscape or pollinator habitat, as I will explain. Your _rst question is what the difference is, and that would be size. It is larger, reaching 6 to 9 feet tall and as wide. And as Proven Winners states, the blooms are massive.

When August rolls around and buttery season is peaking, Pinky Winky and Pinky Winky Prime stand ready to supply the nectar. After watching panicle hydrangeas for years, I can tell you that while they are all beautiful, they are not all the same when it comes to bees and butteries. Pinky Winky and now Pinky Winky Prime are at the top.

Many will _nd this odd so let me explain. First, know that I am not talking about larval host plants. I’m not talking milkweeds, passion owers, dill, tulip trees or pipevines. I am talking about nectar plants. You are probably thinking you’ve been growing hydrangeas for years and never seen a pollinator. I will be quick to say that’s OK, we need shrubs with beautiful owers in the landscape.

Pinky Winky and the new Pinky Winky Prime are good examples. A close examination will show they have large sterile owers that give us the proverbial show and go in the landscape, the “wow factor” so to speak. Among those sterile owers are tiny fertile owers. Now a lot of literature will call the sterile ones owers and the perfect owers orets. I like that.

But some in the industry want to call this lacecap, a term we have given more so to hydrangea macrophylla and hydrangea serrata varieties. I don’t like that. The ower structure doesn’t look like a cap. I’m simply a horticulturist with an opinion.

So back to Pinky Winky and Pinky Winky Prime. I have already referred to the large sterile owers as the wow factor in the landscape. A giant Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on these tiny fertile owers is certainly a wow factor of a different sort. I’ve mentioned Tiger Swallowtails, but I have photos of Palamedes Swallowtails, Gulf Fritillaries, Red-banded Hairstreaks, Honeybees, large Tachnid Flies that look like bees and other ying creatures like the black-winged Dahana moth. In other words, a large Pinky Winky hydrangea can be a pollinator smorgasbord come July and August in the South. Of course these are recommended for zones 3a to 8b so a large area of the country can enjoy them.

These hydrangeas open the door for creative plant partnerships in the habitat garden. Pollinator magnets like Meteor Shower verbena, Truffula Pink gomphrena and Luscious lantanas all make great companions with the new Pinky Winky Prime. By all means, don’t forget Proven Winners great buddleias. Consider also songbird loving plant partners like Pearl Glam beautyberry to add to your habitat.

I have Limelight Prime, Little Lime Punch and Puffer Fish for show and go, but the camera always comes out for the visitors to my varieties with both sterile and fertile orets, like Pinky Winky and the new Pinky Winky Prime. If you live in a region of the country where panicle hydrangeas color up, then you will absolutely love Pinky Winky Prime.

ABOVE: Most don’t think of the Hydrangea paniculata as being a pollinator magnet but varieties like Pinky Winky and Pinky Winky Prime can have butterflies like this Palamedes swallowtail. LEFT: Gulf Fritillaries also find fertile flowers of varieties like this Pinky Winky as a rich nectar source. BACKGROUND: The blooms of Pinky Winky and Pinky Winky Prime are large showy sterile flowers and tiny florets rich in nectar and giving a lacey look to the panicle cluster.

Handout photos / Norman Winter / TNS

Norman Winter

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