Blue Flowers for Beautiful Garden

hey guys how's it going in today's video i want to talk about blue flowers like true blue flowers there's not very many of them out there i just posted a picture of some iris that i have in my garden they're iris reticulata they're not blooming quite yet this year that was a picture from last spring i'm getting excited though because i can see a little bit of their leaves popping through the soil already but the post got us talking because i was expressing um how sometimes plant tags can be a little misleading in the way they describe color like sometimes it'll tell you that the blooms will be blue when they actually bloom purple or sometimes it'll say that they are purple blooms and they're actually pink like i have one instance that really stands out in my mind one memory from the garden center when i was very first starting there like full time in my adult years i remember ordering a customer 15 flats of a purple petunia they were wave purples and they came in and they're like this bright magenta pink and that's what their purple petunias are they're not actually purple they're pink had i known that back then i would have said you know you might if you want purple petunias you might want the wave blue because those are the ones that will actually bloom looking purple um so the customer shows up she sees all of these pink petunias and she was very gracious but she wanted purple for a specific it was for graduation and she wanted school colors and so you know we made everything right and fixed it but it was a very uh good learning situation for me so i learned that you can't always trust a description you also can't always trust pictures especially on the internet it's really hard to distinguish sometimes unless it's a really reputable plant brand like for example we work with proven winners a lot you can go to their website and you can look at pictures and they are true to what you would see out in your garden i mean within the realm of reason i mean there are some hydrangeas that will bloom pink or blue depending on your soil chemistry and there's always room for those kinds of like oddities but for the most part the flowers will bloom what they say they'll bloom as opposed to aaron was showing me the other day a ad i think it was on ebay for some japanese maple seeds i think and it was like rainbow colored japanese maple bonsai plants don't trust those or like the roses that are like rainbow colored it just like it doesn't make any sense um but it kind of got me thinking about blue flowers and how there aren't that many out there and so today i just wanted to share about 20 plants 18 of which i have grown personally and can vouch for the fact that they are in fact blue it can like i mentioned before the blues can be a little bit off depending on soil chemistry and that sort of thing so you have to make room for a little bit of that but for the most part like these i've had really good luck with and they do look very blue to me and since there are 20 plants i went ahead and broke this up into categories and we'll put time signatures up on the screen for bulbs annuals perennials and shrubs so that if you want to skip forward to one section you can do that if you want so let's start with bulbs first i have three bulbs that bloom blue the first one we'll just talk about is the one i posted the picture of the iris reticulata or reticulata i'm not sure how you pronounce it but these are probably one of the most intense blue flowers that i have personally in my own garden and they bloom really early it depends on the year but typically they follow snowdrops so your snow drops come out like when there's still snow on the ground sometimes really early early in the spring or late winter and then they're followed by these iris which only grow about i would say mine grow about seven or eight inches tall and they are just in this big cluster out in the ground like really thick and just so vibrant they've got a yellow throat these are good if you've got deer in your garden they're also drought resistant in fact they prefer to have a little bit like slightly drier soil during the summer time in order to bloom better than next year they don't want to be sitting somewhere that's getting a ton of water and they're really good to pla plant below black walnuts if you have that issue they want a spot that gets fold apart sun i would say that mine are in a very part sun sort of area they get at least six hours of sun during the day kind of broken up during the course of the day they're in the front of a border in our back garden by our barn so there's a lot of stuff right behind them but early in the spring before all that stuff gets its leaves it gets a lot more sun and that's the most important time of the year when it's you know needing to bloom and needing to soak in that energy into their leaves and they spread by bulblets or offsets offsets or bulblets and they just kind of spread in their group mine don't spread like crazy though like i don't have any problem with being like the mascari oh mascari grape hyacinths they want to spread themselves everywhere by these little bulblets and the iris don't behave like that for me in my garden which i'm thankful for and it does take quite a number of years for those little offsets to mature and to bloom but they're a beautiful flower that i want more of in my garden the next bulb is silla cyberica and these are the most gorgeous delicate looking like kind of drooping bell-shaped light blue blooms there is a variety called spring beauty that's a deeper blue but they only grow about three to six inches tall they're a zone two through eight i don't think i mentioned the ira stone which is a zone five through nine um but these scillas are extremely uh winter hardy they also resist deer they're also one you can plant below walnut trees so there's a lot of different uses for them and they're also a really good one to naturalize i don't personally have any sillas in this garden i had them in my last garden and they also didn't spread like wildfire for me i mean they spread um but not like crazy crazy fast but they're really good for i mean you can pop them in your lawn even you can put them in woodland type areas or do a nice drift in your flower bed for some nice early color so pretty and the last bulb is chianadoxa or glory of the snow and these are another gorgeous early blooming uh low-growing bulb that likes to kind of naturalize spread itself around a little bit my parents have this one growing in their garden and so while i don't have it personally here in my garden i kind of consider it personal because i lived in that garden for a lot of years i think i have a picture of these too with daffodils kind of towering above them and then the china doxa right below and it's just such a beautiful beautiful flower and you can find these in different colors too so there's a sky blue like sky to medium blue looking flower and then there's also lavender and pink and white but they're gorgeous star-shaped flowers so moving on to the category of annuals most of these that i'm going to talk about prefer a sunny location the only ones which i didn't really even include on my list are pansies and violas that have more of a blue bloom like a true i think there's a pansy called true blue that you can plant that can take more shade but the rest of them that i've grown need quite a bit of sun so the first one is called blue my mind dwarf morning glory or evalus this plant has really beautiful classic medium blue just like true blue flowers with kind of silvery green leaves and it grows about a foot tall and up to two feet wide it's really good in containers especially and it's super heat tolerant so for those of you who garden in the south in particular it can hold up to the heat and humidity that you guys have and it'll keep on blooming all the way through the season from the moment you plant it up through a time when a frost takes it and you don't have to deadhead them at all they're self-cleaning the next two on my list are both lobelia and i've grown both of them they're beautiful laguna sky blue and laguna dark blue um so these are better like improved varieties of lobelia than the ones you might be familiar with these have much higher heat tolerance so like the older varieties tend to bloom great in the late spring early summer and they look gorgeous and then they kind of start to fizzle out and they just sit there through the summer months sometimes even fry for me in the summer months these did not do that for me they have performed so well i put some beneath some hydrangeas and so i had the white hydrangeas with the blue lobelia and it was so beautiful and they grow up to about 12 inches tall and about 24 inches wide so they're pretty like a strong presence they do tend to perform best though in areas where the nighttime temperatures don't go above 70 and stay there for a really long period of time that's just a little bit too hot they also don't like really wet feet and that's something that i had to learn about lobelia i always thought that i just had to drown them to keep them happy just because they would dry out it seemed like like the plant would fry for me but they actually don't like that they want to dry slightly between watering so i was actually doing more harm than good with my over watering habits now these can go full sun or part sun and they're also self-cleaning they don't have to be dead headed and they will attract birds and butterflies next is supertunia blue skies now this one to me when i grew it here at my home it was definitely sky blue i have seen other people's pictures um there it looks a little bit more on the lavender side so i think it's one of those that maybe like just looks different depending on your climate or maybe it just looks different in real life but i had mine paired with some yellow lantana and some white supertunias um and it was just it was so pretty i also planted some in the ground in the landscape with some supertunia indigo charm with along with the supertunia blue skies underneath my hydrangea hedge so i have an incredible hydrangea hedge so i just i really like that white and blue combination and it was so beautiful in our garden last year they do really well in a sunny position so at least six to eight hours and they'll grow about 12 inches tall about 24 inches wide and i had really good luck with them both in containers and in the landscape which is great so they're very versatile and they attract hummingbirds and butterflies the next several annuals are actually really good to direct seed right out in your garden so the first one is the blue cornflower or bachelor button blue these are beautiful and one that i'm considering putting in my cut flower garden this year they have true classic blue flowers with silver leaves they grow about 28 to 36 inches tall so a pretty good size annual plant but they've got very long stems which makes them really excellent for cutting it makes them very versatile you can use them in a lot of different types of arrangements instead of you know having to do short little arrangements with them all the time um they will reseed themselves around if you don't you know take their flower heads up early enough um but i haven't had them be a nuisance in my garden in fact i don't think i would ever consider that kind of flower a nuisance when it brings so much benefit to the garden next is the classic morning glory heavenly blue and this is a very medium clear blue huge flowers like four to five inch diameter flowers on a very very fast growing vine that wants to grow about eight to twelve feet tall so really good for fences and trellises and obelisks and all kinds of things like the arbors because it grows so fast you get really quick coverage and you can enjoy them for a lot of the season they've got heart-shaped leaves and they're very low maintenance so you actually don't want to fertilize this plant unless you see some sort of deficiency going on because what will happen is if you fertilize too much you'll get a lot of leaves and it'll look very lush but you'll get very few blooms so it's one of those you can just seed out there water it and watch it grow you do want to make sure to harvest the seed pods before they mature though if you don't want them to spread around next is borage which is actually an herb and one of my personal favorites it's one of those that i very first it was the first one i direct seeded no i direct seeded basil first but it was the first herb that was kind of an oddball like it was an herb i didn't really know how to use but i decided to seed it because i thought the flowers were pretty and they are they're this beautiful sky blue color i do notice that on my boards though i get sky blue flowers and pink flowers and maybe i don't know enough about the herb but i don't know if there's like specific strains of them that just bloom blue but i don't even care i mean i like all those colors anyway but those sky blue flowers they taste like cucumber and they're the leaves are actually edible as well when they are younger they get a little bit tough when they get older but they've got a mild cucumber taste so you can use those flowers on cakes and desserts and things like that or in salads or just to garnish your plate you can also candy them but they do like to seed themselves around like i did notice that i i was pulling the seedlings up because i only wanted it to take up a space about this big and they were easy to pull it was just something that i had to remember to do because i do like to see themselves around but honestly if you have the space they grow about 18 inches tall 24 inches wide and they're gorgeous plants the last annual on my list is a nigella or lebanon mist so there are lots of different varieties of nigella this one's nigella damasina i'm probably saying that wrong but it's a nice medium blue color really beautiful great cut flower great dried flower they grow about two feet tall and one and a half feet wide and they come up with this really feathery ferny looking foliage it's just it's so pretty and delicate looking and then they bloom which the blooms are very interesting and then those blooms are followed by really delicate unique looking seed pods so they will seed themselves around if you leave those seed pods on there you can expect to see them come back up it's something that i don't mind because i like every stage of that plant i think every part of it's pretty that i don't mind it but you can harvest those pods and use them in arrangements and make sure that the seeds don't spread all over the place if that's not something that you want they do like a full sun position and they'll bloom about june through august so they have a really long bloom season which is great when you're using them for cut flowers and you want something that's dependable that can last a really that will last a really long time so moving right on into the perennial section the first one is amsonia storm cloud which is a fairly new plant to me in the last few years i've planted it a couple of times in my garden the first time was by a heavy fountain kind of underneath our crab apple tree in our front yard i can see it out my window right now and gophers came through and just decimated a ton of my perennials in that area ate the roots right out the bottom of everything just about except for the hardy geraniums and so i was really sad about that but i did plant some new ones i planted three of them up by our versailles garden and i think they'll actually be happier there because they get more sun but i can't even explain what these look like when they break dormancy and start growing in the spring they come up with almost like asparagus looking kind of spears that are super dark they're super super dark dark green like a dark olive green and then they grow up and start to unfurl and and show off their olive green leaves and then like late spring through early summer they come up with these beautiful periwinkle blue blue blooms and they're kind of puff balls at the top and with individual star-shaped blue blooms they're really pretty the thing i like about these the most um is that they're super low maintenance like they bloom and we enjoy their blooms for several weeks and i don't even think i deadheaded mine and i didn't even notice that they needed it but i was able just to enjoy the plant for the rest of the season without having to think okay so i need to go out and shear this perennial back so it'll flush back and i don't mind that but it's nice to have some plants that just grow and look beautiful do their thing for a few weeks and then you can enjoy their leaves for the rest of the season and this one grows about 30 inches tall by 40-ish 42 inches wide zone four through nine it resists deer and they are heat tolerant as well number two on my perennial list is the jack of diamonds brunnera which i recently talked to you about in a video we were talking about some of the new perennials that are coming out this year and this is one of them this one is gorgeous so that's a zone three through eight really cold tolerant huge leaves like nine to ten inch leaves that have kind of a swirl at the top that are reminiscent of a snail like they have kind of that swirl escargot kind of look but the leaves are dark green with a really heavy silver overlay and because they're a more shade loving plant i really appreciate that kind of color variation in leaves because it's what makes the plant pop but that's really not what this is about this is about their bloom so in the spring they come up with these stalks with baby blue blooms all over and they're they're kind of like forget-me-not blooms they're really beautiful i use them as fillers in flower arrangements all the time and while i grow brenner mostly for the leaves because that's what we see most of the season the blooms are very pretty themselves as well and did i mention they grow about 16 inches by tall by 32 inches wide it's a huge perennial number three are delphiniums now there are actually several varieties of delphinium that fall within that blue category the one i have actually in my own garden is called sky blue it grows about three feet tall and 14 inches wide and the thing i love about this one is it's part of a series i think it's called magic fountain magic fountain series they don't require staking like they are really tough they create nice big stems and you don't have to stake them which is so nice because i love delphiniums i would plant any variety of delphinium that you could give me and i would be out there happily staking them all because i love them so much but it is nice when you don't have to i usually have a pretty good long bloom season out of my delphiniums they usually come out like late spring early summerish and then they push a bunch of blooms and look gorgeous for weeks and weeks and then i cut them back there's still some leaves left at the base and they usually push another big show for me later on in the summer and so i really have a good season out of those i always miss them when i have to cut them back but they're so worth having in the garden this one does attract pollinators so attract bees i see bumble bees on mine all the time it actually attracts butterflies and hummingbirds as well and they are resistant to rabbits a few other varieties you can look up are blue butterfly blue lace and million dollar blue those are all three very blue varieties of delphinium i don't personally have them in my garden so i can't vouch for the exact tone of blue that they have but they look very pretty and they're i would grow them for sure the next one is plumbago and we'll go ahead and put the botanical name up on the screen because there's no way i'm going to try to pronounce that name but this is a plant we use a ton of here in our area they're a zone five through nine and they're incredibly versatile they're incredibly versatile and lots of different types of soil they can take sun or shade they do perform better in terms of fall color and blooming in a sunnier location but you can just use them you know just in like a rock garden or you can use them to just cover up some soil in an area for weed suppression or erosion control and they come out late summer with these like electric blue blooms and then they're followed shortly after by bright red fall color they're just such a pretty plant the next one is also a ground cover but it is evergreen and it's one that i have probably the least amount of experience with because it's a zone six through nine some winters we are a six zone six some winters wear a zone five but it's lithodora grace ward and it has a very deep blue bloom uh and they're very very pretty i planted them in our old garden and i loved it we do have to protect them from the hot afternoon sun because they tend to kind of fry in that but they liked a spot i had mine in a spot on the what side of the house east side of the house where they got a nice amount of morning sun so it bloomed really well but then it was protected in the afternoon and this one grows about six to 12 inches tall and about three to four feet wide it does spread fairly slowly though so it's not one like oh sweet woodruff oh my mercy that plant just spreads itself so fast it's so pretty but it spreads itself so fast you have to be kind of careful of where you put it this one spreads very slowly but it's a great one for erosion control as well next is eryngium big blue and i love origins i actually have white glitter orangeam started upstairs in my plant room i'm getting ready to go over here somewhere on the west side in our white garden but the big blue has huge thistle like looking blooms that i think they get like three to four inches big and they're blue on the top and that blue color actually extends down the stem a little ways and they're a really good cut flower and dried flower i am hoping like with this white glitter that i can save some of those flowers and use them for holiday decorating projects like to incorporate those in wreaths and things and then i do want to get some of this big blue in my garden here i had it in our last garden there's a lot of plants that i experimented with in our last garden which was such a good education for me and there are ones that i want to repeat plant in this garden and there are some that i will let die in that garden back there but the big blue is one i want to continue to grow it gets about three feet tall and two feet wide and as a zone five through nine it attracts pollinators bees and butterflies and it is resistant to rabbits and deer and i would say it's almost resistant to humans the human contact is pretty stickery but it's totally worth the structure that it adds and the color the next one on the list is forget-me-nots and i think that there's a little controversy that surrounds this there are several different varieties or or types of forget-me-nots they are noxious weeds i believe in the midwest they are not here like in my specific area and i think the reason for that is is because it's so dry here forget-me-nots like a really moist area in fact there you could plant them in problem wet areas and they will really like it and thrive they grow about two feet tall and wide and then um have the forget me not blue blooms all over on them and they usually bloom for a good part of the season like may through october but definitely like they will reseed and spread themselves in certain areas so it's one that you would probably want to check with somebody like at your local garden center say like are forget-me-nots eight like will they become bane of my existence or should i just plant them because they're pretty here we carry them at the garden center and we plant them and they don't spread themselves around it's kind of like even the non-sterile varieties of budlia and karyopterus they don't see themselves here even though they're actually a noxious weed here in oregon they're termed that because on the west side it's so much more wet and favorable conditions that they do they they do see themselves like weeds over there but they don't hear in the high desert so anyway forget-me-nots are gorgeous nice blue flowers but definitely one to be wary of i guess i should say and the last two perennials on my list are actually the two that i haven't personally grown myself but i added them onto this because they're on every single blue flower list that you will ever come across and they're the texas blue bonnet which is a type of lupine it's a wildflower and then the blue himalayan poppy i don't know a whole lot about those because i haven't personally grown them but the flowers are beautiful i did read that the blue himalayan poppy is extremely hard to grow even for seasoned gardeners like it's hard to get to germinate and hard to get to grow so i would love to know your guys's experience experience with either one of those two down below in the comment section let me know what you think because it's something i i would probably like to try at some point because of how pretty their flowers are okay so now we're moving on into our very last section which is shrubs i only have three of them here on this list for you today the first one is a karyopterus called beyond midnight these are such a beautiful small shrub this one is more compact than maybe your more traditional varieties of carioctris it only grows about 30 inches tall and wide zoned five through nine but if you want blooms on a plant for the entire season like it seems like they start to bloom middle of summer and they go all the way through a really good hard frost with these nice medium blue blooms i think this is another one that might look a little bit like from a distance it might look like it's a little bit more purple but you get up close for me anyway in our garden they do look blue and they will have just about every single kind of pollinator you can imagine on them like they're always active with bees and butterflies and hoverflies and just butter did i say butterflies like all the things they're just always loaded up with pollinators and i love that and they're very low maintenance very drought tolerant heat tolerant and they just perform next is the blue chiffon roses sharon which i have two of in my garden and i've grown them in the standard form that's how i bought them so they were trained into a small tree form which i love because they kind of have that topiary look and i planted them in a couple of square containers with some supertini vista bubble gum and it was a beautiful show so it was that clear medium blue color and then the baby pink down below it was really quite pretty i think that was last year that i did that and then i transplanted both of the roses sharon's out into the landscape and they're both doing great now if you plant these in their shrub form they do get quite large so eight to twelve feet tall and four to six feet wide and i would just put them somewhere in full sun where you can just let them grow because can you imagine a 12 foot tall shrub full of these beautiful blue blooms and they start blooming right after that first flush of perennials is done and you've sheared them back and you're waiting for color rose of sharon's pick up looking beautiful start blooming and then they bloom through a really good hard frost so they've got really good size kind of medium blue blooms and they're single flowers but the center is full of these like extra like lacy little tiny petals so they look like they're double but they're technically not but either way you look at this plant and they look like they have big fluffy blue blooms they're so pretty they are a zone five they attract all the pollinators so birds hummingbirds uh bees butterflies they're resistant to a lot of different things so they're resistant to deer and i should say they're tolerant of a lot of things so heat actually perform really well in the heat they can take some drought once they're established and they can also handle high ph soils and the very last one in my shrub category are hydrangeas and i'm not really going to delve very deep into this one just because i can't grow blue hydrangeas in our area unless i put them in containers and 100 control the soil even our water is too alkaline so it's even hard in containers to get them to bloom blue but there are a lot of different types of hydrangea macrophyllas and serratas that will bloom blue if you have the right soil chemistry so the tough stuff aha for example i have that one planted in my garden but it blooms pink which i like i love pink blooms but it will bloom blue if you really work on amending that soil or you already have the right soil chemistry and they look like just these they're huge like each individual flower on each individual disc they're really big kind of water lily-esque looking really delicate if i could grow though if any kind of hydrangea that was blue look up the hydrangea or we'll put a picture on the screen of the rhythmic blue they are so so pretty and i see those like in coastal towns here in my own state we'll go visit the coast and i just see these huge hydrangeas full of blue or purple blooms and i'm just like it's not fair so that's it for today's video i hope that this was interesting to you i always liked talking about this sort of thing and this was by no means a comprehensive list i know that there are more blue flowers out there in fact i would encourage you if you have um personal experience growing something different than what i have talked about or if you have a different experience with one of the ones i talked about let us know down in the comment section like let's get a conversation going about this because i think it's really interesting and i would really like to add some more blue flowers to my garden so i'd like to know your experience with these as well so thank you guys so much for watching today's video and we will see you in the next one bye

Channel: Proven Winners

Views: 150,663

Keywords: Proven Winners, gardener, garden, Variety (Organism Classification Rank), Flowering Plant (Organism Classification), flower

Id: uUwYh8dDwUI

Length: 26min 32sec (1592 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 19 2021