Growing, Selling and Propagating Silver Dollar Hydrangea

About the Silver Dollar Hydrangea.

It grows only about four feet or four and half foot tall.

The flower color is a cream why with a tinge of pink.

It loves full sun and partial shade.

It attracts Butterflies and Bees.

Is it deer resistant? No, but it’s what I call deer resilient. If they eat it, it will come back nicely.

It’s hardy in zones 4 through 8. That make it pretty tough!

Silver Dollar Hydrangea is in the P.G. Hydrangea family. Paniculata Grandiflora. Unlike P.G. Hydrangea, Silver Dollar Hydrangea is smaller in size and blooms like crazy!

There are a number of story lines regarding this plant that I’d like to convey to you in this article.

1. This plant is super easy to grow and super easy to propagate.
2. This plant sells like wild fire!
3. For small growers like me this plant is like a cash machine.
4. All you need is one plant like this to start a business.

Propagating Silver Dollar Hydrangea is super easy. I do my hydrangeas by both hardwood and softwood cuttings. We now do our Hardwood Cuttings at the end of March here in northern Ohio or even as late as April 1st.

As an example, in this movie you’ll see a flat of Annabelle Hydrangea cuttings that we stuck around April 1st of this year. (2020) We shot this video on June 29th of the same year and I am pulling fully rooted Annabelle Hydrangea cuttings out of this flat.

We have since potted up those cuttings and today is August 20th, 2020 and customers are buying those plants on a daily basis. It just doesn’t get any easier than that.

On August 18th of this year I shot a video tour of my nursery and in that movie I hold up one of those Annabelle Hydrangea to show you how well they are doing. You can see that movie here;

I know, I know! “Mike, this is supposed to be about Silver Dollar Hydrangeas!” But these plants are very similar and are propagated by the same means and I can’t show you my Silver Dollar Hydrangeas because we potted them a few weeks ago and they all sold! Every last one of them!

I already mentioned that you can propagate Silver Dollar Hydrangea from Hardwood Cuttings and you can also do them as Softwood Cuttings.

Some time ago I did this page on Propagating Annabelle Hydrangea, do your Silver Dollar Hydrangeas the same exact way.

I also stuck a bunch of Silver Dollar Hydrangea cuttings in June as softwood cuttings and they rooted really well. I pulled them from the propagation bed about two weeks ago and we just potted them a couple of days ago. I do my Softwood Cuttings Under Mist because it’s just so easy and I can do thousands of them at one time.

When customers come to the nursery and they see my Silver Dollar Hydrangeas near the drive they all ask about them and want to know if I have any of “those” for sale! And it kills me to say; “Sorry, I sold all I had a few weeks ago.”

This year, 2020 has been insane! Because of Covid-19 our business is booming and it’s the same for All of Our Members Across the U.S.

We have been crazy busy selling out of all kinds of things to the point that it has taken us all summer to get the nursery filled back up again and people are coming daily and buying almost as fast as we can pot things up.

Right now I have zero Silver Dollar Hydrangeas to sell and the Annabelles that we recently potted are supposed to be for spring but they will all be gone before winter. That leaves me with zero for spring.

So two days ago I called a local grower that I deal with and asked about some Annabelle Hydrangea in one gallon containers. The conversation was telling. But first I need to tell you what my motive was.

I wanted to buy a bunch of one gallon Annabelle Hydrangea for two reasons.

1. I need them for my spring 2021 sales since I will once again be completely sold out before winter of this year.
2. I knew that their one gallons would be nice and full and probably about 18″ tall. My plan was to buy them now, hold them until spring, then early spring harvest as many hardwood cuttings as I could from them, then sell the “trimmed” plants in my spring plant sales.
3. I do a lot of business with this grower so they really try hard to get me what I need.

The conversation went like this;

Mike; I’m looking for some Annabelle Hydrangea in a one gallon container. Can you help me?

The grower; Boy, I don’t know. How many do you need?

Mike; I’d like at least 150.

The grower; Oh no, I know we can’t do that many. We’re really short on Annabelle’s this year. Let me talk to my husband and we’ll see how many we can spare. Every year we get an order from one customer for a thousand one gallon Annabelles and I’m not even sure if we can fill that order this year.

Mike; Okay, thanks. Let me know. Do you have any Silver Dollar Hydrangea?

The grower; No, I’ve never heard of that one. But I’ll call you and let you know about the Annabelles.

Okay, so that conversation had a couple of what I call “Light Bulb Moments”.

1. Every year they have one customer that buys 1,000 one gallon Annabelle Hydrangea from them.
2. They’ve never heard of Silver Dollar Hydrangea and it’s a really awesome plant. I’m sure I could sell them a ton of Silver Dollar Hydrangea if I ever get ahead on my inventory of them.
3. But my retail customers are giving almost $7 each for them only weeks after we pot them. I’m a long way from being able to wholesale any of them.

A couple of days later she call me back and said; “Mike, I’m really sorry but right now we just don’t have any one gallon Annabelle Hydrangea that we can spare. But my husband said that we do have some rooted cuttings and you want 150 of those we can do that.”

So they are getting me 150 of their rooted cuttings.

I am telling you this long winded story just to give you an idea of what the plant market is like. Even though these hydrangeas are super easy to grow and they grow really fast, it’s seems that nobody can keep up with the demand for them.

Earlier I stated that “all you need is one plant to start a business” and it’s true. I’ll tell you how I got started with Silver Dollar Hydrangea. I too had never heard of this variety of hydrangea until somebody mentioned it Our Members Area.

Curious and interested I reached out to One of Our Members in Georgia and asked if she had any Silver Dollar rooted cuttings or liners that I could buy. Guess what she told me? “I’m sorry Mike but right now I am completely sold out but I will send you a few bigger plants that you can get can get cuttings from.

Sold out! Are you beginning to see a theme here?

But . . . because she is an awesome person and an awesome member she sent me five or six Silver Dollar Hydrangea plants. She wouldn’t even let me pay her for the plants. She said they were a gift! I will be forever grateful. What she did for me was awesome!

I planted them in my nursery and I’ve been taking cuttings from them. Pretty soon those five or six plants will be yielding hundreds and hundreds of cuttings and finally I’ll be able to get ahead of the demand for this plant.

And I will be able to get cuttings from the cuttings and cuttings from those cuttings!

I love this business!

Where can you get a Silver Dollar Hydrangea? Honestly, the only place that I know of is in our members area. If you Take the Test Drive When it’s Available and simply ask if anybody has any they can spare you are likely to find at least a few. Because our members love helping other members.

Can you get some from me?

1. At this time I do not ship any plants.
2. At this time I don’t have any available even if you visited me in person.
3. But I hope that changes soon. I hope to have a lot of them in the future.

So there you have it. The Amazing Silver Dollar Hydrangea!

By the way, this plant can also be trained to grow in tree form. See this; Training Hydrangea Shrubs to Become Trees.

Questions, comments, mean things to say? Post them below and I will respond.