My spring garden blues...
Sings : 'My garden's looking gorgeous, I've got the spring garden blues... Yes my garden's looking gorgeous, I've got the spring garden blues... Blue's my favourite colour, I love my spring garden blues...
OK. A wee blues song to celebrate all the beautiful blue flowers in my garden. If I remember rightly, spring starts with the little Muscari, or Grape Hyacinths. These certainly are the first blue flowers that are really noticeable. But the weedy Alkanet, which the early buzzy bees adore, has already started filling up every border. I didn't plant it here, honestly! But it's so bee-friendly...
There are wee self-sown pansies everywhere - blue is their favourite colour too, it seems. And more self-seeded little pretties - the forget-me-nots. Weeds, did I hear you say? Not in a large rambling country garden, I reply. These flowers look wonderful, forming seas of frothy pale blue along the edges of the lawns, or in the borders, surrounding pale lemon rhododendrons, wine red Phormiums, the brick red Tree Peonies...
I do grow some rather special blues - the super-floppy Iris Confusa, and the ferny-leafed blue Corydalis. But back to the traditional blue nuisances - let's hear it for Periwinkle! Yeay! Another weed for the tidy, constrained gardener, but a magical ground-cover for me, spreading underneath the huge gum trees in the back of the Shrubbery. Nothing else could grow here and look so lovely.
And there's more...
Later in spring the blue Aquilegias start to flower. And the Brunnera, a perennial with starry blue flowers. And wait! The Irises will soon be in bloom. Oh my goodness. More blues...