April 7, 2005

Most people like to grow yellow, red and orange flowering plants but they forget about blue ones. Blue flowers brighten up the garden during the periods of the day when there is dim sunlight or during cloudy conditions, writes Zahrah Nasirita

There is something really special about the blues in any garden as they add depth to other existing colour schemes. A garden without a single blue tone is, in my opinion, a sad affair indeed.

The blues light up splendidly on a grey day, somehow really giving an added vibrancy to the dimly reflected light of an overcast sky. Likewise, both early morning half-light and the muted light of evening bring the blues to the attention of absolutely anyone, garden lover or not.

The blues on their own may not be to everyone’s taste but artfully used as highlights amongst clumps of yellows, oranges and whites, for example, can add that extra touch of magic which transforms the ordinary into the spectacular.

A wonderful example of the blues is the massed azure of jacaranda trees, botanically known as mimosifolia and members of the bignoniaceae family. They burst into bloom during late spring, from Karachi right up to Islamabad where they have been planted to good effect along avenues in the city and are in natural splendour in various locations around Rawal Dam.

Another tree which has blue flowers, much smaller growing than the huge jacaranda, is Persian lilac, whose botanical name is melia azadarach. It is a relative of the neem tree, and blooms in an enchanting pale blue along some of the most highly tracked roads in Karachi during April and May. This is a pollution-resistant tree, and is extremely easy to grow from seed, unlike the jacaranda which, when grown from seed, can take up to 10 years to start flowering.

Some members of the eucalyptus family provide shimmering blue backgrounds in parks and gardens through the colour of their leaves. Tasmanian blue gum being a prime example, and whilst these may grow into huge trees, if left to their own devices they can be pollarded, a term meaning cut back almost to ground level, at the onset of winter; the foliage being very popular in dry floral arrangements. This does not kill the plant but keeps it as a large bush.

Then there are flowering climbers and creepers in the blues family, far too many to list actually, but one cannot go far wrong with thunbergia grandiflora, a fast growing, extremely vigorous climber with heart-shaped leaves and brilliant blue flowers throughout the hot summer months; fantastically perfumed blue-flowered members of the passion flower or the passiflora family, which are a delight both to the eyes and to the olfactory senses, plus, a gourmet’s dream if you grow an edible fruited variety.

I cannot possibly move on to the available range of perennial and annual blue flowers without mentioning an all time favourite, plumbago, which can be trained as a creeper, climber or pruned back as a shrub. I first came across this reputedly delicate flowering plant when undergoing training in a UK nursery garden, where it was classified as a tender houseplant or for greenhouse cultivation only.

Since then, I am most pleased to say, I have discovered that the plumbago plants I decided to treat as summer flower annuals up here in Bhurban are one of the tough items which have just survived the coldest winter in decades without any special protection at all.

A plant I literally lusted after for many years and, if you come across seed catalogue illustrations of it then I’m sure you would be intrigued by it, too. The illustrations show it to have unbelievably sea-blue bracts, deep purple tubular flowers and blue-green leaves. The seed is very expensive.

I managed to acquire eight seeds about three years ago and was delighted to be able to cultivate this wondrous plant at long last. All the seeds, planted in April here, and to be planted during September in hotter regions of the country, germinated quite quickly and I was thrilled. The plants grew and thrived and the fleshy leaves remained a kind of silvery splotched green throughout the summer.

Come autumn, as temperatures started to drop, the leaves turned to a more bluish tinge. The bracts surrounding the flowers, which were pink not purple at this point, also started changing colour, but only in extreme cold they turned to a dark purplish blue not the brilliant turquoise or sea-blue as advertised.

The reason for the high seed price was that seed production is low, but those that I grew produced millions of seeds, some of which I dutifully collected and others self-seeded all over the place. They didn’t need winter protection, as advised, either but grew and flowered throughout heavy snows and some of the lowest temperatures experienced here. Having got that of my chest, I’ve wanted to for ages but kept forgetting to take photographs.

I will now suggest some perennial and annual blue flowering plants for you to consider growing in your garden, though please keep in mind that some perennials turn out to be annuals in hot areas.

Tall growing blues, (the P denoting perennial, the A annual), include: aconitum (P); agapanthus (P); anchusia (P); delphinium (P); and echinops (P).

Blues of a medium height: adenophora (P); aquilegia (P); borage (A); campanula (A and P); centurea (A); chaenorhinum (P); godetia (A); iris (P); larkspur (A); limonium (A); linum (A); nemesis (A); nigella (A); penstemon (P); salvia farinacea (A and P); wahlenbergia (A).

Baby blues: ageratum (A); brachycome (A); heliophila (A); lobelia (A); pansy (A and P); petunia (A); primula (A and P); viola (A and P).

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