51 
July, 1917 
THE BEST FLOWERS FOR A BLUE GARDEN 
Choosing for the Garden of Aristocratic Strain Where 
Lavenders and Purples Are Positively Not Admitted 
GRACE TABOR 
Anchusa Dropmore shows a blue of true 
gentian quality. It is a tall grower and 
blooms in May and June 
two following it in May and June and larkspurs 
beginning to open about the middle of June, ten 
weeks of glorious color are assured with only 
four plants, or kinds of plants. 
Yet for their airiness and wild grace I would 
not omit the blue columbines, rich in flowers 
though the garden may be at this season without 
them. Perhaps the bluest of all is Aquilegia He¬ 
lena, but there are often lovely blues in the mix¬ 
ture of seeds offered as Veitch’s hybrids. Unfor¬ 
tunately these are only sold in mixture, and while 
H OW many blue flowers are there, I wonder? 
Does anybody know? We usually think 
of them as not at all common—not like red 
or yellow, for example, that are everywhere. 
Are they indeed so rare? 
Rare they are, without question, in gardens— 
that is, comparatively speaking. Apart from the 
larkspurs and perhaps some Canterbury bells, and 
edgings of ageratum, blue flowers are not very 
commonly planted. Yet here before me is a list 
of almost fifty species, all bearing blue flowers, 
and nearly all well worth having in the garden. 
In the very nature of things, blue flowers cannot 
be showy; for blue is the color that always recedes, 
wherever it may be. Plant blue flowers anywhere 
and you make the spot where they stand seem far¬ 
ther away than it was before. There, indeed, is 
one of the tricks of 
landscape gardening- 
blue flowers for spa¬ 
ciousness and airiness 
and distance, and for 
the suggestion of cool 
shadow in the midst 
of summer’s heat. 
To insure this ef¬ 
fect, however, it is 
necessary to use blue 
flowers that will mass 
up well, that will 
spread the color out 
before the eye rather 
than carry it aloft, as 
larkspurs do. I find 
myself constantly 
thinking of them be¬ 
cause they are the 
blue flower par excel¬ 
lence, and everyone 
knows and loves 
them; but it is not 
necessary to confine 
oneself to them, by 
any means, in order 
to have blue, and true 
blue—-and quantities 
of it—in the garden. 
There are the blue 
columbines, for ex¬ 
ample; a colony of 
these is like a patch 
of sky on the turf. 
And there are bottle 
gentians, a heavenly color—two kinds of them, 
one native and blossoming in August, the other 
Japanese and coming accommodatingly in Octo¬ 
ber and November, when few flowers of any kind 
are in evidence. Then there is the blue flowered 
eupatorium, with flowers very similar to agera¬ 
tum— Eupatorium ccelestinum, which blooms in 
August and on through the summer, and is a 
perennial, which ageratum is not. 
All of these and many more are truly blue— 
not purple-blue or lavender or any of the off 
shades, but actually the color of the sky. The 
main thing to guard against in assembling flowers 
for a blue color scheme is the tendency which 
many dealers have to call everything “blue” that 
is not actually purple. It is a matter of some 
difficulty to insure only pure, true blue flowers in 
a collection, but it can be done. 
The blue flowered 
eupatorium blooms 
from August on 
The First Selections 
Assuredly I should put the larkspur at the head 
of the list; so we will start with Delphinium bella¬ 
donna. An earlier blooming plant is the Italian al- 
kanet— Anchusa italica. A recently offered species 
from the Caucasus, Anchusa myotidiflora, is par¬ 
ticularly early, blossoming in April or early May 
with sprays of lovely flowers, something like for¬ 
get-me-nots. It is a low-growing species, not 
exceeding 1' in height, while the others grow 
from 1' to 5' and are very strong and vigorous 
plants. They are not coarse, however, in the 
least; and lovelier shades of blue do not exist 
than appear in the two varieties “opal” and “Drop- 
more.” The first is light blue; the second darker, 
and of the quality of the gentian. With the 
dwarf form in bloom in April and May and these 
it would be possible to save the seed from the 
plants that developed pure color, the columbine is 
such a hybridizer that its isolation is really a 
problem for the professional grower. 
There is a Japanese Alpine variety of colum¬ 
bine that has blue flowers, but their yellow corol¬ 
las prevent their being used where pure color is 
desired. The name of this variety for the 
benefit of anyone who does not mind the yel¬ 
low touch, is Aquilegia akitensis. 
Along with the larkspurs, around the middle 
of June, will flower the low-growing Polemo- 
nium Richardsoni, or Jacob’s ladder. A place 
that is partly shaded suits this better than full 
sunshine. Only 1' in height, its spiked flowers 
massed thickly beside or before the taller lark¬ 
spurs, it rivals them in beauty and showiness. 
There is an earlier 
variety too, Polemo- 
nium reptans, which 
blossoms during May 
and early June. 
For the interval be¬ 
tween July and late 
August the sage fam¬ 
ily can meet the de¬ 
ficiency. There is now 
a blue perennial sage 
—Salvia uliginosa— 
which will blossom, it 
is claimed, from June 
until frost. It is a 
very strong-growing 
plant, too large for 
the border under 
ordinary circum¬ 
stances, for it is 
bushy and attains a 
height of 5'; but a 
smaller variety, 
Salvia azurea, which 
comes from the 
Rocky Mountains 
and grows only 4' is 
suitable even for 
small space. It does 
not blossom until 
later, however — 
from August 
through September. 
Speedwell is ex¬ 
cellent, the beaute¬ 
ous veronica, of 
which perhaps Veronica longifolia subsessilis 
is the finest. This comes into bloom the middle 
of July and lasts a month. Veronica spicata is 
a lighter blue, and earlier to bloom by three weeks 
or a month, so it is not as important to us as the 
later flowering Veronica maritima, which makes 
its display from July on into September. The 
first named grows to 3' in height, the second to 
V/i', and the third to 2'. 
And there is veron¬ 
ica, the speedwell 
of midsummer 
For the Season’s End 
Although it flowers at the same time, the blue 
Japanese bell-flower or balloon flower— Platyco- 
don grandiflorum —cannot be left out. It is in¬ 
deed one of the loveliest varieties the garden 
can entertain, and may be used either as a speci¬ 
men in the border or in masses. I believe that 
you will never be content with a specimen once 
you start with it. Nothing but masses will do. 
While the bell-flower is closely related to the 
Canterbury bell, which it resembles, still it is 
quite distinct, and unlike the ordinary Canterbury 
bell it is a perennial instead of a biennial. 
With half the summer gone, I must put in the 
aconite immediately! It is not a good plant to 
use, if there are children about with the bad habit 
of nibbling at things, for aconite is poisonous. 
Yet it is so beautiful and so worthy in every way, 
that if it were not for this one drawback, I should 
put it much higher up in the list. 
One of its great advantages is its willingness* 
to grow under trees and in shade anywhere. Few* 
really lovely and showy flowers will do this. Then, 
its period of bloom is noteworthy and its color Js* 
rich and pure. Not the least of its attractions is 
the quaintness of its blossoms—liitle. hoods or 
