My hydrangeas haven't ever gotten fungus, but they have been frost damaged. Is that possible here? Also, they like regular moisture. The soil surface looks dry, but what is it like when you plunge your finger in deeply?

Looks like cold damage..l.eave it alone and wait for warmer weather.

Thanks so much for the responses!! Had a nice soaking rain today on Long Island...so it is considerably moist. Could be cold/frost damage...Could it successfully recover this season?

It does look like winter damage after this really bad winter. Many hydrangeas are having all growth from the crown this year.

But I also noticed that the soil looks pretty dry so keep an eye on that; periods of dry-wet are not good for the leaves and can result in leaves that do not grow much because they grow a little then get insufficient water and partially dry out (and the cycle restarts). Try to maintain the soil as evenly moist as you can. Water deeply with about 1/2 to 1 gallon of water per watering any time that a finger inserted to a depth of 4" feels dry or almost dry.

I would also add mulch to conserve soil moisture, minimize waterings and protect the roots in the summer/winter; maintain about 3-4" of any organic mulch at all times, winter included.

If you did not check for roots circling the pot when you planted it, consider extracting the plant and, if the roots are growing in circles, cut them. When a plant in a pot has this problem, use a knife to cut the roots vertically about every 1-2" apart and make a "x" cut at the bottom of the pot.

If you checked for roots growing in circles around the pot at planting time and there were none then do not worry about this and just maintain the soil well mulched and moist.

Good luck, JoJo1212.
Luis

If you look at the photo below, you can see holes, etc. in the leaves of the hydrangea in the lower right side. Those leaves were touched by frost, but the leaves that weren't frosted grew were just fine. So I wouldn't expect that those individual leaves will look totally normal later, but the rest of the plant will grow and leaf out normally. If this were not a recent transplant, I would suggest that you could pinch back those stems once they grew some, but a new transplant will need all its leaves to make food, so for now I would just live with it. Once it's a bit bigger it will have only a small portion of its leaves damaged.

Been raining lots here on LI! Took this picture this afternoon, looks even worse.
Thank you all for your responses...i'm really thinking this is winter damage, it warmed up and then got cold again a week or so ago.
Thank you Luis! When I planted this little one 3 years ago I did check the roots and they weren't growing in circles. Maybe I should dig it up and recheck it.