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.
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: ● ‘Dark Knight’, ‘First Choice’ and ‘Heavenly Blue’ have dark blue flowers.
● ‘Arthur Simmonds’, ‘Ferndown’ and ‘Kew Blue’ have medium blue blooms. (‘Worcester Gold’ also has medium blue flowers, but it’s really grown for its golden yellow foliage. The leaves fade to medium chartreuse in the heat of summer.)
● ‘Azure’, ‘Blue Mist’ and ‘Longwood Blue’ produce light blue flowers. 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).
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