Spring Blues

My garden is in a decidedly ‘blue’ mood at the moment. Islands of blue forget-me-nots are everywhere.... some in planned places and some by serendipity... echoing the color of the brilliant blue sky overhead. And a duo of Indigo Buntings, small iridescent blue birds that winter in Florida and summer in New England, are a delight to watch, as they peck at the millet seed we have sprinkled on our small shed roof.
Yesterday morning I spent time with two very special people, Sharon and her mother, in their peaceful Vermont country garden. Sharon delights in blue flowers, and she was reeling off the names of some of her favorites...Forget-me-nots, Prairie Blue Baptisia, and Bluebells. Sharon is also dealing with early onset Alzheimer's disease, and her garden has become a very special part of her life. This blog post is for Sharon, and for everyone else who who loves blue flowers and has a cool climate garden.

It seems that true blue flowers for the garden are fairly difficult to come by...which in turn gives them  a certain cachet among gardeners. Unfortunately this scarcity value causes the people that write garden catalogues to describe some MAUVE or LAVENDER flowers as ‘BLUE’ ... this distortion irritates me, but it is a personal peeve.

But most of the ‘spring blues’ are the real thing. The first ‘blue’ in my spring garden is Scilla siberica, blooming here for much of April. Since it self-seeds easily, it pops up in all sorts of odd places. It also obligingly co-exists in a big patch of myrtle at the edge of our woods; its blue flowers shine against the myrtle’s dark leaves. And towards the end of its flowering period the lavender myrtle flowers open up as well...a very pretty sight.
My Virginia Bluebells, Mertensia virginica, are the next blue flower to bloom in my garden. They are slightly paler than the Scilla siberica, but still a true BLUE. Over the years quite a respectable colony has developed outside my study window, growing alongside my beloved English Cowslips. Virginia bluebells also self-seed, and new plants tend to show up several feet away from the parents. By mid-June their leaves will disappear, so now is the best time to move any stray plants back into the fold and form bigger groups.
Also flowering at the moment is Camassia quamash. It is more of a lavender-blue, but still very pretty. Since it loves a wet spot, some years back I planted half-a-dozen bulbs in the tall grass near our pond, together with some ‘Summer Snowflake’ Leucojum. We avoid mowing the entire area until after the leaves of both have gone dormant in mid-summer. They have both gradually multiplied and they look great together.

Forget-me-nots are, of course, true to their name. They reappear every year, mostly from the plentiful seed supply produced by each plant. It was ten years ago when I first really appreciated the sight of forget-me-nots growing en-masse. We were visiting the lovely Hamesbest Lilac display gardens in Randolph Center, Vermont, where the forget-me-nots made a veritable carpet in all the beds of lilacs, and I was hooked.
I know some people scoff at forget-me-nots as weedy. Certainly soon after flowering they quickly become tatty and mildewy. So I enjoy the flowers while they last, then assertively cull the plants. This is a quick job and it clears out the beds for the perennials to follow, and still seems to leave a few plants and plenty of seeds to create next year’s display.

A few years back I succumbed to the lure of the renowned Himalayan blue poppy Meconopsis.   Cady’s Falls Nursery in Morrisville, Vermont was offering some beautiful plants for sale and I bought two.  Meconopsis seem to be famous for two reasons...they are a startlingly different shade of blue and they can be really fussy to grow. I sited my new plants according to the detailed directions in the Cady’s Falls catalog, so that they would get a few hours of shade at midday, and carefully prepared the soil. So far they have obliged me very well. Their color is quite unique, and I leave it up to you to decide from the photograph of them growing in my garden how to describe this particular blue.
Perhaps this summer I will try once more to grow Delphiniums with their unforgettable blue spires. I grew delphiniums quite successfully here in Vermont for a number of years, although the individual plants were short-lived for me. Delphiniums are tall growers and they do need to be staked carefully. My biggest problem with growing delphiniums successfully was the wind. We live on the western slopes of the Green Mountains, and by some quirk of geography, when the wind blows out of the south, it becomes incredibly strong and gusty. And of course, by Murphy’s law, this always happened just when my delphiniums were at their peak of perfection, so that they would snap off just above the top tie.
I am still looking forward to a few more blues coming into bloom in the next month or so. Notably there will be Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’ which, as you can see in the picture above, for a while, gives a decidedly blue cast to my big perennial bed, as well as Baptisia and Monkshood...Aconitum carmichaelii.

And, as I contemplate all the blue flowers I have already aquired for my garden, I realize that, like lots of other gardeners, I do have a special spot in my affections for the ‘true blues’.