A Blue Wave

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Zahrah Nasir

This week we are taking a look at creating a blue-themed garden. There are a surprising number of blue flowers with which, depending on your location of course, an absolute masterpiece of floriferous artistry can be created.

There are so many different shades of blue — some of them verging on purple, whilst others are so pale as to be almost white — that you can easily find flowers with which to weave a varied tapestry indeed.

Selection of the depths and hues of blues is a personal choice. For instance, the colours will really glow by using the most brilliant of azure blues, larkspur and delphiniums in eye-catching groups. The palest of blues can be used to light up shady places and tree-dominated areas, where their delicate colour will transform the night into day.

Blues may sound boring but, I promise you, they are anything but!

Irises are a prime example of beautiful blues. This huge genus of plants comes in many other colours too, from dwarf species suited for planting on rockeries, to glorious bearded iris suitable for planting in beds. To create a ‘wild garden’ setting, the shades of blues through a range of irises is mind-blowing. In fact, iris got me hooked on blue, with larkspur in a very close second place.

In the initial stages of creating a woodland cum forest garden in the Murree Hills, about 24 years ago, I was gifted a single clump of sky-blue iris kashmiriana. I fell completely in love with its inner petals streaked with pure white, and dusted with a splash of dark gold velvet.

This one plant thrived in the shade of apple, apricot, peach and fig trees, and multiplied so much and so rapidly that, within a few years, each spring brought a beautiful blue wave throughout the orchards and surrounding gardens.

Clumps of bearded iris, much taller than iris kashmiriana, in hues from the palest blue right through the spectrum to almost black, enhanced the show and quite knocked the royal blue and rather elegant Dutch iris off their pedestal.

Aquilegias, in single and double form and in a variety of blues, were encouraged to add to the rolling seascape that the orchard sometimes appeared to be. Meanwhile, a veritable river of jewel bright, blue lobelia, artfully flowing out of a huge jug, carefully balanced on its side at the top of a steep slope, added to the intricate tapestry.

Pots and baskets and small beds of petunias, pansies and their smaller cousins, violas, stitched the front garden together. This living, flowering mulch of blues also helped massed sweet peas, in shades of blue, stay in place and in flower for longer than usual, by keeping their roots nice and cool.

Finding seeds for blue flowers, be these annuals, bi-annuals or perennials and for blue-flowered shrubs and trees, is far easier now than previously. But the challenge of nurturing sometimes almost invisible seed through to eventual flowering stage remains the same.

Create a blue garden of your own and lose yourself in the peace and tranquility that it will reward you with.

Below are some of the easiest ways to find blue-flowered seed varieties to help you on your way but, when making your selection, please don’t forget to take into account your local climatic and soil conditions. What flourishes in the cool of the Murree Hills may not be happy in Karachi.

Annuals and bi-annuals: ageratum, phacelia, larkspur, pansies/violas, forget-me-nots, Californian blue bells, cup-and-saucer plants, balloon flowers, flax, scabious, cornflowers, pimpernel, cineraria, lupin, petunia, statice, brachycome, asters, brunnera, chicory, linaria, phlox, agastache, lobelia, nemesia, arcotis, nemesia, nigella, nolandra, and nierembergia.

Perennials and bulbs/corms/tubers: violets, vinca, delphinium, campanula rotundifolia, iris of many varieties, Dutch hyacinths, bluebells, campanula of various varieties, freesia, grape hyacinths, cranesbill geranium, lavender, anemone, hellebores, primulas, salvia, hollyhock, hellebore, scabious, lupin, chicory, agapanthus, agastache, arcotis, gentian, gentianides, sage, veronica, rosmarinus and aquilegia.

Shrubs and climbers/creepers: sweet peas, clematis, wisteria, roses, buddleia, passion flowers, duranta, daedalacanthus, Indian lilac, hydrangea, plumbago, ipomea, petrea volubilis, solanum seafortheanum, indigo and thunbergia grandiflora.

Flowering trees: jacaranda, lignum vitae and Persian lilac.