three blue flowers

The Camassia leichtlinii have been doing their stuff.  They are hardy bulbs with spikes of violet-blue flowers around 2.5cm across, each with six slender petals, and wispy protruding stamens with tiny yellow anthers.  From a distance they form a good mass of colour, especially in evening light when, like many flowers with some purple in them, they seem to fluoresce.  Close up they are not quite so satisfactory, as the bottom flowers on the spike have withered before the top ones open.  Also, they were intended to contrast with the yellow roses in that bed, and they will be over before the roses start.  Still, they are pretty plants.  People who like the ambience of a garden without being total plant nuts ask what they are with genuine enthusiasm.  They are extremely good doers with me, growing on yellow clay that is sticky beyond belief in wet weather and is now set like concrete.  The Camassia leichtlinii don't merely grow, they bulk up into generous clumps and seed themselves around.  The dense bunches of strap-shaped leaves remain decent-looking for a long time, unlike some bulbs, like alliums whose leaves start to die back by the time the flowers come, and you have to work out how to hide them.  The white flowered form of C. leichtlinii flowers later than the blue, opening just as the blue is finishing, so by planting them both you can have an extended Camassia season.

Centaurea montana is also flowering, and this time I got the blue and yellow contrast spot on, because it opens at exactly the same time as the neighbouring yellow tree peony.  This plant grew in the garden of my childhood, and I wanted to grow it myself when I got my own garden, once I had worked out what it was.  In the mid 1980s it was so far out of fashion that I had difficulty tracking down plants, or even the seeds.  It seems more in favour nowadays, and a white flowered form and yellow leaved variety are also available.  I tried it initially in the top part of the garden, but it sulked and failed to thrive on the sand, and now lives happily in the yellow clay.  Centaurea montana has elegant thistle flowers, with a central boss of pink petals and black anthers, and surrounding rays of slim blue petals ending in a graceful fringe.  The blue again has a distinct hint of violet, and glows as sunset approaches.  The flowers are carried on long sprays that get tatty after flowering, but once those are cut down the grey basal leaves are respectable for the rest of the summer.  If you are not too enthusiastic about dead-heading it will seed itself usefully.

I'm not totally convinced by the merits of Ceanothus as a tribe.  I've tried using the low-growing, evergreen C. thyrsiflorus var. repens as groundcover on banks in two different gardens, and both times it grew rapidly to form a lovely dense mound, flowered ravishingly for a couple of years, and then died, leaving a great ground-uncovered hole in the planting scheme.  I've come across a couple of theories why Ceanothus are prone to do this.  One said that the roots are very susceptible to wind-rock, and the other said that being from California they can be killed by excess water during periods when they aren't actively growing.  Whatever the cause, they don't seem reliable, as a second prostrate variety I tried died as well.  However, 'Puget Blue' deserves an honourable mention.  It makes a stiff, medium sized shrub, with tiny wrinkled dark green leaves, and at this time of year is smothered in small, fairly dark blue flowers.  I have it in two places in the top part of the garden, on very light, free-draining soil, and it has withstood the cold of the past two winters, and numerous ferocious gales have rocked its roots, yet it is still alive.