When Martha Stewart first revealed her passion for hydrangeas in 1994, her readers did a double take. Until then, many people viewed hydrangeas as blowsy shrubs marooned on beach-house lawns or garish foil-wrapped gift plants clogging supermarket aisles in the weeks before Easter and Mother's Day.

The realization that these horticultural faux pas could yield ravishing bouquets or become stars of the late-summer border came as a shock. But once skeptics opened their eyes to hydrangeas' intricate beauty, abundant summer-into-fall bloom, and obliging tolerance of some shade, they began to wonder how they had lived without them for so long.

Infatuation grew into a serious romance, one that has matured despite the occasional heartbreak of frozen flower buds, unkind pruning, and pink petals that stubbornly refuse to turn blue. Fortunately, with the right plant and a little patience and care, the first two problems are often avoidable; as for the third, willful color changes can be embraced as charming eccentricities.

Although no plant promises eternal bliss, recent breakthroughs in breeding have yielded a multitude of new reasons to fall in love. The enormous range available today amazes shoppers who remember garden centers a decade ago, when labels read simply "pink hydrangea."

Now even mass-market suppliers offer climbing hydrangea (Hydrangea anomala ssp. petiolaris) and multibranched H. quercifolia, with its unusual lobed foliage-source of its alias, "oak-leaf hydrangea that turns russet or burgundy in autumn. Specialty nurseries entice sophisticates with a host of nonfloral attributes, such as variegated leaves and stems in striking shades of red and black.