Spring blues will make garden all the more beautiful

DIANE HEILENMAN, GANNETT NEWS SERVICE

Originally published June 9

The best time to have blue in the garden is spring.

A visit to a wild garden on the bluffs above Harrods Creek in Oldham County, Ky., brought that home sharply after native-plant fan Jayne Waldrop extended an invitation to see stunning native colonies of bluebells and camassia at her house.

The best part of this wild garden, Waldrop said, is that "I didn't have anything to do with it!"

Sometimes in gardening, all you have to do is leave well enough alone, which has been Waldrop's good fortune. Most of us have to jump-start nature. This works especially well with the spring blues.

But it needs to be said up front: There is no point in collecting plants from the wild. Most of the time, the wannabe gardener who digs up a wildflower only notices the plant at its time of highest stress, during flowering. Such robberies are often failures.

The way to get your blues humming is to buy plants or trade with other gardeners.

Two sources are Sunlight Gardens in Andersonville, Tenn., 865-494-8237, www.sunlightgardens.com, and White Flower Farms of Litchfield, Conn., 800-503-9624 (ask for the bulb catalog), www.whiteflowerfarm.com.

Here's a short guide to the wild blues:

-Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) are members of the borage family and do the same trick as those annual herb flowers. Both fade from blue to pink. Such an old favorite, some people don't know it's a wildflower.

This is one perennial where a single plant won't do. A billow of bluebells is the only goal to have, and the way to get there is to buy a container-grown plant (bare-root plants might have been illegally collected) or beg a transplant from a friend.

Plant container material in spring. Dig transplants as the flowers and foliage fade. Set the plants in moist, rich soil. In nature, which tends to make better drainage than gardeners, bluebells can handle flooded conditions on the stony banks of creeks or the verges of swamps.

Then, let nature do its thing or increase your colony-to-be by sowing seeds as they ripen in the summer or dig transplants.

-Dwarf or spring larkspur was a natural gift to me some 15 years ago when we started mowing grass near the creek later and later each spring. Procrastination does have a purpose. The larkspurs have self-seeded and spread each spring.

The chance act has become a pleasant union of goals. Once the spikes of spurred flowers form seed, the grass has become intolerably long and the act of mowing spreads the seeds.

Over time, my wild larkspur has produced natural variations from purple-blue to a lovely white with a pale blue spur.

The spring larkspur is a relative to delphinium and to the summer annual larkspur, but is stronger stem-wise, hardier cold-wise and infinitely easier to grow.

-Camassia is a so-called minor bulb in the trade, but it's a major spring player in my garden. It deserves greater use. The flower, which emerges so slowly that this activity is a delight in itself, is a spike studded all around by starry florets of blue that range from pale to deep. The darker blues offset the brilliant yellow stamens. With a little spring breeze, the whole thing sways and sashays.

Blooms often hold through June. If you plant it, don't skimp. A clump is well worth the money.

If you are lucky enough to find a colony, do not be tempted by the hundreds on hand; buy bulbs. You will find that you like the darker blues of those available on the market, such as Camassia esculenta and C. leichtlinii, Blue Danube.

Unlike so-called major bulbs -- such as tulips -- camassia does not rot in damp but thrives in moist soil as long as it is not clay. It also handles half-shade.

The Olympian Copyright 2001

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