Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show: New meaning to Winter blues
Lift the blues with these blues! There are plenty of hardy blue perennials for our cool climate! Some lovely choices include a native called Amsonia. The cultivar is ‘Storm Cloud’.
It’s a low-maintenance shrub-like delight that grows to about 36 inches tall and about 40 inches wide. The leaves are a sort of olive green while the perwinkle flowers sit atop making it look like a cloud of blue. Plant in sun to part sun for full effect. It blooms from late Spring to early Summer.
There’s a native Baptisia hybrid that’s just decadent! Also called False Indigo, Decadence ‘Blueberry Sundae’ looks as tasty as it sounds!
This compact plant has blue-green foliage with indigo blue spires of flowers showing off from late spring to early summer! However, the plant is beautiful in the garden all season. ‘Blueberry Sundae’ grows to 3 feet tall and 3 feet wide. It will tolerate poor soil but does appreciate full sunshine. This is a long-lived perennial that prefers not to be moved. It produces lovely seed pods in the Fall.
From early summer to late summer, I will suggest a new cultivar of Speedwell coming to garden centers this year! Magic Show ‘Wizard of Ahhs’, not the OZ put the AH….
Plant this fella in the front of your garden or use in a container for a filler (then save it and plant in the garden come Fall). The Wizard of Ahhhs’ grows to just 16 inches tall with a width of about 22 inches. This Speedwell grows best in average to moist, enriched, well-drained soil and full sun. Shear it back after flowering.
There’s a new bush-style clematis coming to garden centers this year too! And it’s blue! ‘Stand by Me’ is a non-vining herbaceous Clematis that dies back to the ground at the end of the growing season.
It has a profusion of Blue bell-shaped flowers. The plant does best with support from staking, cages or neighboring plants. This is a beautiful little plant!!