Whatever shade takes your fancy, you can brighten up spring with bulbs of blooming marvels
Blue is a relatively rare colour in plant flowers: not unusual, but of note when seen. Be it shrubs such as ceanothus, caryopteris or lavender, or in herbaceous perennials such as agapanthus, gentiana, meconopsis, omphalodes and pulmonaria, blue flowers are sought after and add a welcome and different splash of colour to beds and borders.
One group of plants, however, offers a significant number of examples with blue flowers and that’s bulbs. Particularly common in spring-flowering bulbs, the blues of anemone, bluebells, camassia, crocus, hyacinths, muscari, ipheion, iris and scilla, to name but a few, remain eternally popular and typically solid performers. The good thing about all these ‘little blue bulbs’ is that they’re not just a pretty face. They make excellent garden plants across the UK. Here are a few to try…
AWESOME ANEMONES
Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’ is a joyous plant and ridiculously easy to grow, bulking up quite quickly to cover the ground with fresh green foliage and rounded, many-petalled, rich blue flowers in March and April. ‘Blue Shades’ can be variable but is usually royal blue and up to 15cm high. For a taller and later-flowering anemone, go for an example of the A. coronaria De Caen Group, such as ‘Mister Fokker’. If you have a shady spot under a tree or deciduous shrub, you could choose amore woodland-friendly species such as A. nemorosa and select a blue-flowered form like ‘Robinsoniana’ or ‘Royal Blue’. These produce fewer flowers but grow better in darker spots. If you have all the anemones you could hope for, then look to hepatica for an altogether more refined plant. H. transsilvanica and H. nobilis have many forms that are worth investing in.
BRILLIANT BLUEBELLS
Bluebells are eternally popular, with most British gardeners and naturalists adorning our native Hyacinthoides non-scripta as a choice species with scent and delicate, rich blue flowers. The Spanish bluebell (H. hispanica) is seen by many as an invasive plant that’s thuggish and competes with native bluebells in woodland where it has naturalised. This is partly true, but more commonly they hybridise to form anew plant. While not at all common, there are a number of named varieties of bluebell available from specialist growers. These generally have a different flower colour or unusually shaped flower
