As last week's column hinted, true blues are a passion I share with many gardeners. Purples abound in the flower world—blue purples, reddish purples, and what I think of as royal purple, the perfect balance between blue and red. And they are wonderful. But blue, pure sky and blue eyes, is not so common.

Time to straighten out the rules: what's blue? The flower growers and sellers and namers tend to include under this sacred heading anything blue-purple, and there is even a plum colored hellebore now which is called "blue". Come on! Blue is azure, or gentian, or royal, or cobalt, or sky, or delphinium. A Book of Blue Flowers, by Robert Geneve, inspires the purist with its title and with a jacket photo of the Himalayan poppy (meconopsis betonicifolia) the epitome (I almost said the cyanosure) of blue flowers. Inside we find lots of lavender and purple flowers as well as the true blues. Admittedly, it is hard to catch true blue color in photographs; some examples that I know to be true blue show as lavender or blue-purple in the photos. It's a fine reference book, by the way, with an excellent chapter on the chemistry of the pigmentation of flowers.

Scilla is blue; glory-of-the-snow is blue purple; puschkinia is milky white with a deep blue line penned down each petal, making it pale blue in effect. These small spring bulbs have come and gone. Currently we have grape hyacinth (muscari armeniacum), a brilliant deep blue with just a touch of purple, but we'll let it pass as blue because in the company of the whites, yellows, pinks, oranges and reds of spring tulips and daffodils it shows as blue indeed. Grape hyacinth blooms from later April into May, so is great with later daffs and tulips. The "grapes" are little hanging closed bells on a 5 to 8 inch spike. Growers keep making muscari spikes fatter and fatter, and now slightly different colorations are available, like ŒMt. Hood,' with a white snowcap on the blue below, and ŒValerie Finnis,' the whole spike a powdery, silvery lavender. Saw this two weeks ago at the Botanic Garden in spring baskets (who'd have thought?) with the pale spikes standing erectly above softly trailing light purple nemesia. But back to the brilliant blue of grape hyacinth: go to Holland in early March, to Keukenhof Gardens, where there is a river of this muscari--thousands and thousands of them--flowing between banks of tulips, daffodils, and islets of crown imperial (fritillaria imperialis). Breathtaking. This scene is reproduced in many bulb catalogs, and in Geneve's book. Oh, don't fail to smell grape hyacinth; not only do they look sort of like bunches of tiny grapes, but they smell like grape soda. Pick a few for a small vase and enjoy. If you'd like to have your own rivulet of blue next spring, or an edging to a border of tulips and daffodils, remember it has to be put in this fall. And if you want a lot of bulbs from the Garden Fair's fall sale, please order them before the end of May. Be warned: when you plant your muscari in the fall, it may send up tufts of leaves before the cold weather; not to worry, the bulbs will flower just fine next spring.

As if the blue bulbs were not enough (and where blue is concerned, there is no enough), several spring perennials are on our true blue list. We spoke of Virginia bluebells last week. This week it's forget-me-nots, the clusters of tiny, simple five-petaled blue flowers perhaps only a quarter of an inch across. This inflorescence occurs in at least four genuses: anchusa, brunnera, cynoglossum, and myosotis, and it's not surprising that they are all related, all from the family Boraginaceae. The first three above share a greater or lesser degree of hairiness on the foliage.

Right now two or three kinds are in bloom. Look for the perennial forget-me-not (brunnera macrophylla); it's the deepest blue one. (For location, see the first paragraph under "Glory Spots" below.) Note its rich, largish foliage, heart-shaped (some of the leaves right out of a green valentine), with the tiny deep blue flowers dancing above. The sprays extend during its spring blooming season to 2 feet in height. It's happy in dappled shade, is very hardy, and slowly increases. Breeders have produced several white or cream variegated varieties, but I haven't seen any locally yet. They would light up a shaded area, wouldn't they?

The second forget-me-not, an annual or biennial, is woodland forget-me-not (myosotis sylvatica). It has a yellow eye and is a slightly lighter sky blue than the brunnera. Plants are shorter too. (Same location as the one above.) If planted or seeded in partial shade, this one will bloom from late spring into early summer, on coiled stalks that unfurl gradually, and it will happily self sow. It's delightful just popping up here and there, but can be encouraged to spread where you want it. When the stalks go to seed in mid-June and turn black, you can sweep them off the plants by handfuls and just shake the seeds or drop the stalks where you want them next year. They disappear quickly and other annuals can be overplanted. Once I had a May "blue dream" planting: this forget-me-not, swathes of
slightly lavender-blue wild blue phlox, tall camassias, and a tall, deep blue-purple campanula. It sang a blue to blue-purple song. But I noticed that the form of the camassias could scarcely be appreciated, since the blue tones blended into a haze. Like the forget-me-not, wild blue phlox (phlox divaricata) makes a lovely contrasting underplanting to taller spring bulbs. It's a spring blooming woodland perennial, especially happy in shade to dappled shade. It's slight touch of lavender makes a small variation on the true blue theme.

Woodland forget-me-not comes in pink or white variations, but these colors are rarer. Years ago I was privileged to see a small parterre garden, a rectangle of green diagonals, which had been planted for spring with lavender-blue violas in the diamonds and hundreds of pink forget-me-nots for the border. But then, she had a gardener and a greenhouse.

The third spring forget-me-not is Chinese forget-me-not or hound's tongue (cynoglossum amabile); the hound's tongue name refers to the long, coarsely haired leaves. It's a biennial that blooms the first year if sown early enough. ŒFirmament' is the prized cultivar--it's an intense blue with a white eye, reaching 15" tall. This one likes full sun and good drainage. It too will self sow; it declines in hot, humid weather, but if it is cut back before seeds form, sometimes new flowering stalks will appear in cooler weather. This one, too, has pink or white variations.

GLORY SPOTS OF THE WEEK:

Just for front yards full of tulips, see 5401 Harper (the yellow brick house; thanks, Joy Rosner), and 5813 Blackstone (thanks, Lesley Bloch).

Front yards full of mixed plantings: 1. Always in bloom and wonderful, 5547 Dorchester; tulips, daffodils, early purple iris, lots of woodland forget-me-not among them; deep blue camassia (the tall spikes); hellebores (see below), both white and rose, on the south fence; and in the shade going back along the house, daffs, a hardy rosy lavender geranium, species primrose (primula vera), an early white allium. 2. Six red brick row houses on the west side of the 5700 block of Dorchester have all gone nuts in their front yards, with spectacular results. Bulbs of all kinds, including a crown imperial (fritillaria imperialis). This is about 2 feet tall, with a topknot of green leaves, under which a crown of bells of burnt orange or yellow hangs down. It's quite imperial indeed! If you can get close to one, lift a bell with your finger, gaze inside, and see the pearly nectaries at the base of each petal. A little miracle of nature. And do not miss (you really can't) four wonderful groundcovers in large sweeps: pink-flowering lamium, blue -flowering vinca minor, the perennial forget-me-not on one side of a walk, and the woodland forget-me-not on the other.

Hellebores (helleborus hybrids)! Most of us have read about them, few have seen or grown them. In the new Linnaeus Garden lying south of 59th Street between University and Ellis, there is a large planting of tall hellebore plants just opposite 1126-1130 East 59th Street. Tall means 9 to 12 inches
(some are like groundcovers) and this planting on each side of an entrance walk has all the shades hellebores come in, which means white, ivory, greenish, rose and deeper rose, and plum, all with a faded Victorian cast. The flower colors and their aging habits remind me of late summer hydrangeas. The lovely flowers are too modest, hanging their heads so that you have to lift them to appreciate the size, the sprightly clump of stamens, and the speckling in many. They are planted here in fairly deep shade, and the wonder of them is that they have bloomed early, perhaps in March, but the flowers will hang on, gradually fading, at least into June. Meanwhile, the foliage is large, deeply cut, and ornamental. They are said to seed. Also, if the foliage is cut off when it gets weary, new foliage springs up to take its place.

Not to be missed: A large wisteria vine on the wooden fence on 54th place, north side, between Dorchester and Blackstone, come into magnificent soft purple bloom.

Flowering quince (chaenomeles japonica) are coming to an end, but there is a lovely, and different, one in the front yard of 5337 University; it's a Japanese variety ŒToyo Nishiki' which blooms white, then gradually and irregularly blushes and turns deep coral pink. It will take time to see it, because this yard is a wonderland of a variety of spring bulbs and miniature iris that demand inspection.

A few doors north, at 5321 University, several shrubs of single-flowered kerria (kerria japonica) are in cheery yellow bloom. Another sighting, at 4819 Greenwood, peeking over the brick wall. This shrub blooms through the summer too, a little less exhuberantly, but mighty nice. Another yellow-flowering sprng shrub, less showy but worth a look, is cornelian cherry (cornus mas); there are big old ones in front of Kent Hall on campus, about 58th and University. The deep garnet fruit makes a wonderful jelly.

Here's a rare treat: flowering dogwood, the tree, (cornus florida) is really not too happy in Chicago, though it does fine in Indiana and southern Michigan. BUT— go to 52nd Street between Blackstone and Dorchester, look into the second backyard to the north and see a most unusual sight: both a white and a deep pink flowering dogwood in splendid full color! These folks also have a weeping cherry and a large old river birch; they really like trees.

Other early perennials blooming now: Wild blue phlox (phlox divaricata) in the front yard of 5000 Greenwood. Old-fashioned bleeding heart (dicentra spectabilis) at the northwest corner of 50th and Dorchester, at the gate into Kenwood Park (or do you still call it Farmer's Field?) Bleeding heart comes in pure white too, but I haven't seen any "public" ones. Lavender-blue creeping phlox (phlox subulata), a whole belt of it, embracing the evergreens in front of the house at 4921 Ellis.

We spoke last time of the marvelous combination of soft magenta rhododendrons and blue hydrangeas at 4939 Greenwood. This week, the tall rhodos have gone out of bloom, but a lower belt of the same color of azaleas has made a horizontal under the stone ledge that supports French doors, and here the stone troughs of blue hydrangeas are still blue and blooming. I found that they are indeed live hydrangeas, but forced in a greenhouse and put out early especially for a special entertainment. The owner transplants them into her garden and finds them perfectly hardy. We have had a splendid show from all our flowering trees for the last two weeks, but surely the white flowering crabs have been sublime, and we have a wealth of them. Still worth a side trip: 1) on the 53rd Street side of Nichols Park, a long row of them; 2) at the east end of the University Apartments, the building that is an island in 55th Street, in a huge semicircle; 3) and all around the apartment/town house complex that lies from 49th to 50th between Lake Park and Dorchester.

Let us know what you are seeing. This is a wondrous time!

Prior Columns:

• April 21, 2004
• April 2, 2004

© Bam Postell, 2004