A garden can put on a glorious bloom display for months, but by the middle of summer, it can start to look a little tired. Blue mist (Caryopteris x clandonensis), sometimes called bluebeard or blue spirea, produces lightly fragrant, blue flowers from midsummer to frost that can revitalize your season-weary yard and bring it back to blooming beautiful. The bonus: Its silvery or gray-green foliage just looks cool and is pleasantly scented.
A fully mature blue mist is lovely in late summer.
Photo Credit: Lane Greer
‘Longwood Blue’ has large, medium blue flowers.
Photo Credit: Lane Greer
The golden yellow foliage of ‘Worcester Gold’ fades to medium chartreuse in the heat of summer.
Photo Credit: Gerald L. Klingaman
Blue mist is usually considered a shrub, but you may find it in the perennials section at your garden center. (It’s grown as both.) The plant is hardy in USDA hardiness zones 5-9, but it’s less woody in the colder regions of the country, while it becomes a larger, woody shrub in warmer zones. It can be easily transplanted into full sun or very light shade, grows 2-4 feet tall and should be spaced 2-3 feet apart.
There are several cultivars worth trying:
When the weather gets hot (over 85 degrees F), blue mist will slow down and flowering will decrease, but pruning back old blooms will encourage new ones. Very hot summers and very cold winters are the bane of this plant, so it can be short-lived. Plants aren’t grown from seed, but they can be propagated easily from cuttings. As a result, it may be best to treat blue mist as a short-lived shrub and replant periodically (every 3-4 years). To create new plants, take softwood cuttings (the easily bendable, green wood) during summer. They’ll root easily, so rooting hormones aren’t necessary. Just stick your cuttings in a good, well-draining potting mix and provide even humidity and lots of light (but not direct sunlight).
Blue mist looks good planted en masse. Its small size allows it to be tucked into tight spaces, too. It’s also easy to incorporate this pretty plant into almost any garden setting. Use it in mixed borders, with other shrubs and with perennials. You can combine it with other mid- to late summer bloomers as well, like black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida var. speciosa ‘Goldsturm’), sneezeweed (Helenium), chaste tree (Vitex agnus-castus), purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii), tickseed (Coreopsis), beebalm (Monarda), New England aster (Aster novae-angliae), pink mums (Chrysanthemum x morifolium), boltonia (Boltonia asteroides) and smaller flowering grasses like Pennisetum alopecuroides and Miscanthus sinensis ‘Morning Light’.
As you can imagine, blue mist looks good with almost anything in the garden, so give it a try in yours – it’ll be a nice fit.
