VS is known to flop at a young age more so than most other H. paniculata. As some have stated as the wood matures and puts on caliper they'll hold up better.

Google vanilla strawberry and you'll notice many garden shots of VS are flopping but they are all young plants for the most part.

For a similar looking flower and color I believe Hydrangea paniculata 'Bokrathirteen' is a superior cultivar at the stems are more upright.

nice green lawn ...

consider that your lawn fertilization is affecting the perennial.. that does not.. perhaps ... it does NOT need so much nitro ..

and you cant trim the lawn under it either ...

put in a 3 to 4 foot bed of mulch ... and stop fertilizing it with lawn fert ... if it needs any at all regardless ...

what else is in there.. a glad.. or an iris???

when anything flops, when it should not do so genetically ..... consider that you are over fert'ing such ... if left to their own devices.. things grow properly ... when they grow so much.. that they cant hold themselves up.. resulting in floppage .... then consider that you might be feeding it like a child ... rather than like a plant ...

ken

Thanks whaas and ken_adrian. Yes, that is a glad. Underneath. I never took the time to part the hydrangea so the weight of the flower just flatten out the glad. We don't use any fertilizer on our lawn because of our dog and kids. I did mixed a lot of pea moss into the soil when I planted the hydrangea last Fall. Should I tie it to the light pole this year so that next year it would be more upright? Should I also prune this fall?

Tthe canes should get stronger as the hydrangea grows and matures. I think it's very normal for young ones to flop, You could try a peony cage as well to help keep the canes upright.

Cut those longer branches by half each season. They will thicken and support new offshoot branches.

I tried pruning an older, established hydrangea paniculata that way--and killed it. Since then, I don't prune them.

My current Vanilla Strawberry is 4-5 years old and stands up by itself, although it does get a bit of a droop when the blooms are full and it rains. Nothing serious, however. I should add that I have never pruned my VS--it just got older and sturdier all by itself.

Until then, you could buy one of those wire green "fences" that are about 2.5 ft tall and circle it around the hydrangea so it can't fall to the ground at any rate.

You do know, don't you, that your VS will get about 8 feet wide and you will never again be able to get to that pole--but maybe you don't really need to.

Kate

Are you sure you killed it? You're theoretically supposed to be able to prune paniculatas close to the ground if you want to.

Well, it isn't there now. It was ancient when I moved on the property back in the 1980s, and I pruned it to death back in the 1990s. It might just have been too old by that time. But I decided then to let shrubs grow their real and natural size rather than to always be pruning them back in order to make them fit a smaller size. And if a shrub is too large, I don't buy it--I look around until I find one that naturally fits the size I want for that spot.

Kate

Well, it isn't there now. It was ancient when I moved on the property back in the 1980s, and I pruned it to death back in the 1990s. It might just have been too old by that time. But I decided then to let shrubs grow their real and natural size rather than to always be pruning them back in order to make them fit a smaller size. And if a shrub is too large, I don't buy it--I look around until I find one that naturally fits the size I want for that spot.

Kate