Most gardeners are familiar with this old stand by used so often in commercial landscapes. Rounded flower clusters in blue and white of varying heights are abundant in almost any business or public landscape. They are tough, easy care plants that provide a splash of color in the summer. They are low maintenance and tough plants..difficult to kill, easy to grow. Their cultural needs are minimal and if you give more water and a bit of fertilizer, they produce an even greater abundance of flowers! There has been hybriding work done with these so you can now have them in various sizes, color forms (the dark colors are very spectacular) and even variegated leaves. All the new hybrids are tough, easy care plants as well. I particularly like the darker cvs. now available. They make dramatic accents and focal points in the garden, even more so if planted in large groups. Deep idigo blue is the color of the cv. Storm Cloud and large round blossom clusters rise to perhaps 4 ft tall in abundance. They also make great material for cut flowers.
Basic care, regular watering, sun to part shade, and very little maintenance is all they need. They are evergreen in most years unless we have a severe frost, and there are also deciduous forms which make the winter clean up very easy. (you just clean up everything, instead of raking out dead leaves and old flower stalks). Allow plenty of room between plants if you use the larger forms since they can spread widely. A mature plant can easily spread 5 ft across in the larger selections.
There are also many small cvs. suited to smaller scale plantings.

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