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Purple and blue
TomCranham
Posts: 139
in Plants
I'm looking for ideas for my purple/blue border and would appreciate some help. I didn't realise that it would take so many plants to fill 
The border gets the sun from around 8am until 2pm and like the rest of my garden is going to be wildlife (especially bee/butterfly) friendly.
Thanks for your help!
Tom
0
Posts
Centaurea montana (perennial cornflower)
Annual cornflowers.
The bees love chicory and its blue flowers. It gets very tall in my garden and does tend to spread. Easily grown from seed.
The flowers are very similar to Catananche (cupids dart). Also easy to grow from seed.
A little splash of yellow in a blue border lifts it. The odd welsh poppy next to a cornflower looks good.
For purple, I love Salvia Amistad. You can propagate from cuttings quite easily. The bees love Phacelia tanacetifolia. It is cheaper if you buy a large packet as used for green manure and just scatter it and let it flower.
To fill a new border, I use some perennials, but I only buy one and split it or take cuttings to multiply it for following years. In the early years, annuals from seed are used as fillers.
You can also add borage and cerinthe to the ones above. Both are hardy annuals and self seed freely.
Pansies and delphiniums, one easy and available, the other not so much...
Yes Borage is a stunner & the bees go mad for it. I love Agastache Black Adder as a purple & Penstemon Electric or Heavenly Blue
irises - all sorts. I have dark and sky blue siberian iris, vivid blue dutch iris, ice blue winter flowering ones and some rich royal purple bearded iris. Geraniums Mrs Kendall Clarke and Rozanne (of course) and also Buxtons Blue which spreads itself along the border edges very obligingly. Ajuga purpurea runs about underneath the bigger plants. Buddleja Black Knight
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Salvia caradonna. I planted a few 9cm plants last year and they flowered forever during summer. Really looking forward to the show from bigger, stronger plants this year!
Probably closely followed by alliums - Christophii, gladiator, giganteum, purple sensation etc.
I went a bit blue/purple crazy buying seeds for this year and have sown most of the ones fidget mentioned above.
Cornflowers, cantanache, phacelia and phlox "lavender beauty". All annuals and easy to grow from seed. Growing Clary sage from saved seed from last years purple ones, hoping they come true to colour of parent plant.
Salvia "Golden Jubilee" which should have a bright acid green foliage. Echium "blue bedder" and probably more that I've forgotten about
I'll have to check my seed tin.
I'm thinking of planting some calendula (a golden orange colour) for the contrasting colour, saved seed from last year again.
I love the blue of Salvia patens, a rich velvety blue, but they have to be lifted for winter.
Agastache, salvias and veronicastrum (the tops bend over with the weight of bees) and v. bonariensis of course and it's cousin v. rigida
Last edited: 06 May 2017 20:04:41
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
MY go-to purple wildlife-friendly plants are Salvia nemorosa Caradonna, and most hardy English lavenders - some spectacular ones that aren't Hidcote or Munstead. Also some half hardy French ones do pretty well in anywhere below Hadrian's Wall!