Category Archives: blue flowers

blue flowers, color in the garden, drought tolerant groundcovers, fall garden, gardening under oaks

Color & Fragrance in the Fall Garden

So I walk out my front door and a sweet honey fragrance overwhelms my senses. What?s blooming now that coul

osmanthus hetrophyllus ‘Goshiki’

d be giving off a scent so strong I can smell it from a long way off? I don?t see anything flowering that I know to smell so delicious. Following my nose I find it. The teeny, tiny, white flowers of a variegated Osmanthus heterophyllus -Goshiki False Holly- is making it?s presence known in a big way and I?m enjoying every minute.

In the fall I appreciate flowering plants all the more. With the season is winding down and the fall color display just starting, color and fragrance are the heroes of my garden these days. In addition to the variegated Goshiki False Holly, the vanilla-scented heliotrope are still blooming. Mine looks pretty ragged at the end of winter but bounces back each year and with a little dead heading during the summer keeps on providing those deep vivid purple flower clusters -until Thanksgiving some years.

Dianthus

Also I notice the apricot-colored dianthus is blooming another round of clove-scented flowers. Dianthus and their close relatives, the carnations, are a must-have in any garden. Combine pinks as their called with other perennials of the same medium water requirements and grow them near your door or patio chair where you can enjoy them regularly.

Although ceratostigma plumbagioides – Dwarf plumbago – flowers don?t have fragrance their deep, electric blue flowers along with the foliage that turns reddish brown as the weather cools are a valuable groundcover for dry areas under oaks, for instance. They thrive in sun or part shade with moderate to o

Dwarf plumbago

ccasional irrigation. Beautiful when planted in drifts or as a filler between other shrubs.

With Halloween coming up orange blooming plants like Lion?s Tail look perfect in the autumn garden and get the attention of birds, bees and butterflies. The scientific name leonotis leonurus translates from the Greek words meaning lion and ear in reference to the resemblance of the flower to a lion?s ear but this perennial shrub has long been called Lion?s Tail in California. A member of the mint family it starts blooming in very early summer and continues through fall. Having very low water needs and hardy down to 20 degrees it?s perfect for a drought tolerant garden.

bulbine

Another good choice for your drought tolerant garden is the long blooming Hallmark bulbine or Orange Stalked bulbine. It?s a succulent you?ve got to try. Starting in late spring and continuing through fall and often into winter this one foot tall groundcover spreads to four or five feet wide. The orange star-like flowers with frilly yellow stamens form atop long stalks that rise above the foliage. Remove spent flower stalks to encourage reblooming.

mimulus ‘Jelly Bean yellow’

What?s a fall garden without an orange or gold hued mimulus to feed the hummingbirds? Mine haven?t stopped blooming since early summer. Deer resistant and drought tolerant Sticky Monkey flower get the sticky part of their common name from their leaves which are covered with a resinous oil discouraging the larvae of the checkerspot butterfly from dining too greedily.

Orange and blue are opposite on the color wheel so they look fabulous together. Enter the salvias with their mostly blue and purple flowers. From California natives such as salvia clevelandii to Mexican bush sage to Autumn sage there are thousands of varieties available. All are deer and gopher resistant, drought tolerant and hummingbird magnets.

blue flowers, California Native Plants, garden design, perennials

Tranquil Blue in the Garden

With the heat of summertime upon us I?m drawn to those areas in my garden that have blue, white and lavender flowers. A hot day just seems cooler there.

Washed out magenta is nature?s favorite go-to color and the shade that hybrids will revert to it if allowed to go to seed. Among gardeners, red is a favorite color. Orange and yellow come next, then pink and purple with blue and white both comparatively rare in nature last on the list.

geranium ‘Orion’

So naturally, most of us gardeners want the elusive blue flower in our gardens. Knowing that cool colors recede, place them around the edges or at the back of a garden to make your space appear wider or deeper.

True blue flowers are rare. We use words like cerulean, azure, cobalt, sapphire, turquoise, electric blue or steel blue when describing blue flowers. Hybridizers have tried for years to produce a true blue rose or blue daylily. Blue plant pigment is hard to manipulate. It occurs in the daylily as a sap-soluble pigment and is difficult to segregate. Lilacs, purples, orchids and mauves we have and working with them hybridizers may eventually get near blue, but pure blue probably never. Recently, some companies have found a way to insert some blue in the center of their daylily flowers but a totally blue daylily has never been produced.

Rose hybridizers striving for true blue have come close by

hydrangea macrophylla

crossbreeding lavender hybrid teas in order to produce offspring having optimum amount of cyanidin, the pigment that imparts purple or magenta tones and flavone, the pigment that gives light yellow tones.The results have been more of a silvery lilac or mauve. A blue rose is still in the future although labs in Australia and Japan are genetically modifying the pigments from petunias to produce a blue rose. Their results are not yet perfected and these roses are more of a lilac in color and can not survive conditions outside the lab. It is apparently very difficult to isolate the pigment cyanadin. Delphiniums have a monopoly on it.

omphaloides

The color blue is calming and tranquil. It is the color of serenity and peace and is said to slow down the metabolism and reduce the appetite. When brightened with white or combined with yellow or orange in a complementary color scheme the results of blue in the garden are breathtaking. The great English gardener Gertrude Jekyll used plants with golden leaves or clear yellow flowers to spice up blue gardens. Just remember that blues and purples are the first flowers to fade as darkness falls so be sure to have those whites and yellows to carry your garden into evening.

There are many blue perennials as handsome as they are durable that we can enjoy in our gardens today.
Some of my favorites are old fashioned hydrangeas, violas and campanula. Both are valuable in the shade garden along with omphaloides and brunnera. The blue spikes of a long blooming peach-leaf campanula just go together with the white and green variegated foliage of Jack Frost Siberian bugloss.

agapanthus africanus

In early spring we are dazzled by our native ceanothus which bloom with deep blue, sky blue or electric blue flowers. Emerald Blue phlox subulata carpets the ground in spring with clear blue flowers that top creeping stems. Penstemon Blue Springs, a California native hybrid, carries dense spikes of bright blue, bell-shaped blossoms.

Make sure your garden has a blue section to cool you on a hot day.