Blue Gardens

When you are fantasizing about gardens, do you ever dream in color?  I do, and a game I sometimes play with myself is to create all one-color gardens.  (I do this sometimes instead of counting sheep if I can’t sleep, weird I know and not necessarily conducive to sleep, but fun anyway.)

My first real blue garden grew more by accident than by design, though. Since blue is my favorite color it wasn’t hard to create a blue garden because I am just drawn to this color and tend to choose it frequently when I’m buying flowers. But true blue is not an easy color to create hybrids with and so many of my blue plants could also be considered purple.

I am an amateur, too, so before I name some of the plants that grow in my garden, I need to explain to you that some of the names I use are common names and some others are botanical names. I tend to use both interchangeably because I call them by the first name I learned.

I apologize if this causes you confusion. If I know both names I’ll use them, but in some cases (like iris or delphiniums) there are many blue choices-all which are good!  In addition to that I’ve come to realize that plants sometimes have many common names and in different regions they might have different names.  So with that said, here are some plants to obtain to create a full season from early spring to fall of blue plants. 

Newly planted container garden: Begonias and lobelia

 Blooming in the spring are bulbs such as grape hyacinth, crocus, Siberian iris, crested iris, scilla, and alliums.  Plant them in the fall, though, for spring color.

Blue and white scilla

Next, to bloom in my garden are a blue pasque flower and some sweet little forget-me-nots.  This is followed by blue salvia (extend the bloom of this one by sheering off all the old flower spikes.) and campanula glomerata (Joan Elliot).

During the summer there are lots of things blooming: delphiniums, veronica, blue fescue grass, lavender, lupine, scabiosa (blue pincushion), blue flax, and several kinds of bellflowers. 

double blue delphinium

Then there is one of my favorites, Platycodon graniflorus (blue balloon flower).  I love this plant because unlike so many others, it behaves itself.  It grows a little slower than some others in my garden.  It stays where it’s put.  It doesn’t need staking and deadheading keeps it blooming for several weeks.  In addition to that, the buds look like charming blue, hot air balloons (hence the name), which eventually open into little cups.

Later in the summer, there are monkshood, Russian Sage, globe thistles and blue asters.  My garden is not entirely blue though because I don’t have the space to devote to just one color, and I like too many flower varieties to limit myself to just one color.  During the late summer there is a lot of yellow in this garden, too, because all of the black- eyed Susans are blooming.

So far, I have only mentioned perennials, but there are many blue annuals in my garden also.  Every year I have larkspur, morning glories, and bachelor buttons.  These usually self seed for me, but every few years I’ll buy another package of seeds if I notice there are not many seedlings in the spring.  I also have Love-in-the-Mist that self sows, but this one I have to pull out occasionally because it wants to take over. 

My favorite bedding plants include lobelia (in three shades of blue), ageratum, alyssum, and wave petunias.  All of my containers have some or all of these darling plants in them. In fact I’m a huge fan of lobelia.   I usually buy a whole flat of it because I want it everywhere. It can be tricky though and some summers it all dies on me by August.  That’s another reason I buy so much of it in the spring.  If a plant dies in one of my pots I can usually replant it with another that I have in reserve in a different pot.

Dark blue Lobelia

By using painted pots, or furniture you can also increase the amount of your chosen color in your color garden.  I have a glazed blue bird bath in the center of my garden. 

I’ve named a lot of my favorite blue flowers, but this list is by no means complete.  There are many, many more.  Have fun exploring the world of blue flowers and find your own favorites.