When planting shrubs in your garden you will need to think not only about whether you want flowering shrubs and if so what color. You will also need to think about what you want the shrub to do. Is it for a hedge or a screen for privacy, to fill in a bare spot or add height to the garden or relive hard angles from the house or just to look pretty?
Another thing you might want to consider is the character of the plant. I’m a huge fan of plumbago particularly the deeper blue, though I like the one that flowers sky blue too. We have three plumbagos in our back garden.
The two sky blue plumbagos merge together in the back corner. The deeper Royal Cape is growing along our side fence.
The plumbago is a vigorous plant that likes to sprawl a little. Although some gardening experts suggest it can be grown as a hedge, I’m not a fan of trying to hedge it. To me it seems to destroy the character of the plant. In my opinion if you want a hedging plant then go for something that is meant for hedging, rather then something that is meant to be free and unfettered.
What happens invariably is that it may look neater and more uniform but I’ve never seen one that flowers as well when cut into a hedge. And after all, isn’t the point of growing plumbago, because of the beautiful blue flowers? It is to me.
I love colored flowers but blues and purples in particular. As a result we have a jacaranda I’m hoping will manage its first flowering this spring and several buddleia bushes which are great for attracting butterflies to the garden, another bush which flowers in blue butterfly shaped flowers and is understandably known as a butterfly bush, blue agapanthus, blue salvia and petunias.
As well as these, in the front garden we have two low growing, only about eighteen inches high, blue flowering bushes that I have no idea of the name of. They were bought purely because they have the most amazing Delphinium blue flowers and they flower nine months out of twelve. Can you tell blue is Mick’s and my favorite color?
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