There is nothing more frustrating than cut flowers that wilt or droop too fast.. and one of the WORST culprits for premature drooping are HYDRANGEAS!  
It never fails, you can bring home perfectly perky cut mop head blooms from the florist or even cut your own in your back yard and within hours of putting them in water, they have fallen into a lifeless slump.  Wilted and droopy.  So sad.

These are some stems I cut in my own back yard. I IMMEDIATLEY stuck them in water, and within 2 hours they looked like this:

I have very alkaline soil.. so the hydrangeas from my yard are very pink.  If your flowers are blue.. you can actually make them pink by adding lime to the soil!  Alternatively, I could turn my pink flowers blue by adding acid to the soil (peat moss, sulfur or ammonium nitrate.)

Okay.. but what about the droopy blooms?

Fear not! Hydrangeas are actually pretty easy to revive.. even once they get to the point of where you think they cannot be saved.  Mine looked like they were near death.


The trick is HOT.. and I mean STEAMING HOT water.   Unlike other flowers, Hydrangeas don’t like cool water.  In fact, they hate it.  As counter-intuitive as it sounds, you need to only add cut hydrangea stems to boiling hot water.

I’ve tried all sorts of other tricks (adding stuff to the water, cutting the stem a certain way, soaking the flowers themselves.. and NOTHING works as well as giving them a nice hot tub treatment.

Make a fresh cut at the bottom of the stem (I cut an an angle to get more surface area), and add the cut ends to boiling hot water. I heat a cup of water up in the microwave on high for 2 minutes.

The stems may discolor but that is okay.  You should notice an improvement, starting at the bottom with the leaves closest to the water, and slowly working it’s way to the blooms themselves.  I leave them in the water until it gets Luke warm (30-45 minutes) and then I transfer the stems back into the vase with fresh (also lukewarm) water.

Within an hour or so, your lifeless limp hydrangeas blossoms will be back to their full glory.

If they don’t completely perk up, you can repeat the process, cut another inch or so off the bottom and heat more water. Over the next few hours the blooms should get to their full perky potential.

Why does this work for hydrangeas when other flowers wouldn’t fare nearly as well being boiled alive?

Hydrangeas have woody stems and a very vicious sap that will clog the water flowing up towards the bloom.  That sap softens and dissolves in hot water, unclogging the flow and allowing water to travel to all the blooms. 
How do I prevent Hydrangeas from drooping in the first place?

The boiling water method is also great when you first bring your hydrangeas home or cut them off the plant.  You can give your stems a PRE-EMPTIVE dip in boiling water even before you add them to your vase to keep the water flowing up the stem.   Just cut the ends, place the stems in boiling hot water for 30 seconds to a minute and transfer them into your container filled with luke warm water.

Now you can enjoy your cut flowers for as long as week!