Blue Flowered Shrubs
Plant Blue Flowering Shrubs as an Accent in the All Blue Flowers Mixed Bed or Border or Use Shrubs with Blue Flowers to Surround Your Blue Flower Garden
Blue flowering shrubs are unusual but welcome accents to the flower garden. Use them alone or use them to form the bones of an all blue themed flower garden.
How to Use Shrubs in the Flower Garden
A well designed flower garden should be integrated into the surrounding landscape. One way to accomplish that is by framing and defining the flower planting area by using hardscape such as walks and fences, as well as by carefully placed shrubs and small trees. These framework trees and shrubs provide opportunities to add blue flowers to your planting.
Use the blue flowered trees and shrubs to provide a windbreak, frame a view, or create a backdrop. Or, integrate them into the flower bed or border in what is called a mixed planting.
Shrubs with Blue Flowers
Certain cultivars of the shrubs Syringa vulgaris (lilac) such as "Wedgwood Blue", and several of the hardy shrub hibiscus (Hibiscus syriacus) such as "Blue Bird" and "Blue Satin" along with Vitex agnus castus (Chaste tree) and butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) "Nanho Blue" and "Adonis Blue" offer copious blue blooms on larger scaled plants.
Depending on where you live, the Hibiscus and Vitex may reach the size of small trees or, in a colder climate, might be grown as cut back shrubs. Cut back shrubs -- including the Buddleias -- are cut back to the ground each spring so they never reach their full potential size.
Sub Shrubs with Blue Flowers
Take advantage also of the subshrubs or larger sized semi-woody perennials with blue flowers such as Caryopteris, Perovskia and Baptisia. These plants grow large enough (over three feet!) to help provide structure to the summer flower garden.
Hydrangeas with Blue Flowers
And by all means consider using blue flowered hydrangeas in your flower garden. There are many cultivars of Hydrangea macrophylla and Hydrangea serrata with amazing blue flowers. "Nikko Blue" for instance, is widely grown. For many hydrangeas (but not all) the flower coloring depends on soil pH; the best blue develops in acidic soil.
And if you garden in a colder region where the usual cultivars are not reliably bud hardy, look into the newer varieties of hydrangea such as "Endless Summer" which bloom on both old and new wood.
More on blue flowers for the garden:
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