It can be hard to find blue flowers for the garden landscape, but blue star provides great transitional color from late spring through early summer.
Cultivation Information and How to Grow Blue Star (Amsonia)
Botanical and Common Name: Blue Star is also known as Amsonia and the most popular for gardening is Amsonia tabernaemontana. Other common names for the plant include Eastern Blue Star, Willow Blue Star, Amsonia Willow, Dogbane, and Woodland Native Blue Star.
Plant Category: An herbacious perennial, the blue star provides interest to the garden landscape.
Bloom Time and Color: Blue star has blue flowers that last for a few weeks in late spring and early summer.
Foliage: The willowy foliage provides season-long interest and a soft texture that help highlight other plants in the garden even once the blooms have faded. Bright yellow autumn color provides additional interest.
Growth Habit: A shrub-like growth habit, blue star grows in soft mounds that are attractive in the landscape.
Dimensions: Blue star is a large perennial that grows between 2-4 feet tall and 3 feet wide.
Maintenance: While blue star has little maintenance needed, some gardeners prefer to cut the plant back by one-third after blooming to help keep the plant compact, and encourage attractive, bushy foliage growth.
Pests or Diseases: Blue star has few pest problems or diseases to worry about and is a long-lived perennial plant.
Using Amsonia in the Garden
Preferred Conditions: Blue star is hardy in zones 3 through 9, making it a very versatile plant in the landscape. Amsonia prefers full sun to light shade and seems to tolerate a wide variety of soil types and garden conditions.
Companion Plants: Blue star flowers combine nicely with other spring bloomers because the blue is not garish, but blends easily with brighter colored spring flowers. The foliage makes a great backdrop for bold flowering plants like dahlias and peonies.
Seasons of Interest: Amsonia will stay interesting from fresh foliage sprouts in the spring, through spring and summer flowers and well into fall when the leaves turn for autumn color.
Uses in the Garden: Use blue star to break up bolder colors in a spring flowering garden, as an attractive complement to broad leaved plants and large flowers, or to create an interesting focal point in the autumn garden. Many gardeners appreciate that blue star is a native flowering perennial.
Any gardener looking for an adaptable and hard-working native perennial to add to any landscape, would be hard pressed to find one better than Blue Star.
Angela England - Angela England is a problogger, mother of four (yes I know what causes that), speaker, teacher, labor doula, gardener and so much more.
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