Specialty Gardening: perennials in containers, year round, 1 by Noreaster

Noreaster wrote:
When I was researching how to winter protect my hydrangea last fall I found another site where a guy recommended essentially building an igloo around the plant, using black garbage bags stuffed with leaves as the building blocks. Which again confuses me because as a beginner, I don't have a grasp on what a plant needs during it's dormant months. How could something stay alive in a garbage bag igloo?? But then, how could my plant stay alive under all those wet leaves with heavy snow on top? I think the weight is what caused me to lose a couple branches...I guess I should have tried to make the plant more like a tight column before burying it...mine is a bit of a sprawler.

I also have to admit that I don't quite get how the buds work. It had buds of some kind all up the stems (canes?), but from what I can tell by looking at hydgrangeas at the nursery, you only get a flower at the end of each cane. So, the lower buds I saw were just leaf buds? So, I did lose the buds at the tips of a few canes, plus those two branches that broke off completely. But the good news is that I just went out and peered into some of the leaves and I saw the beginnings of about 3 or 4 flowers. Here is a pic from last November.