No, no, not those kind of blues! Quite the opposite in fact. At the very beginning of the year the tiny irises appeared, as they always do, surprisingly. You walk round the garden and there’s nothing there; the very next day these miniature navy blue flowers are startlingly open.
Next in line, well no, not in line actually, dotted madly around the garden as they’re self- seeded, the forget-me-nots arrived. Lovely, especially among the tulips which is a very traditional English planting scheme.
Then the English bluebells. Every year the specialist magazines tell you where to go to see the bluebell woods. As I can’t go I decided to plant my own, mini, bluebell wood. Rigorously ENGLISH bluebells. I continue to see letters to the editor lamenting the take-over of the Spanish -thug bluebells! Crime in the garden!
On come the Aquilegias. Only the old-fashioned blue-violet ones with their pretty common-name , hats and bonnets, which self-seed very vigorously round the garden and they always find a better place for themselves than the one I had chosen for them. I walk round the garden snipping off seed heads but I know I’ll have new guests next year.
And now it’s the turn of the love-in-a-mist. Beautiful sky blue Nigella; I did have some very dark blue ones a couple of years ago, but then again, you accept what nature offers (although I do weed out the muddy pink ones which totally spoil my blue mood)
I’ll have to wait for high summer for all my blue salvias and Russian sage, but blue is always worth waiting for!
English that grows 