A dreamy blue contrast
OK, so maybe blue-on-blue isn鈥檛 the most ingenious color combination you can think of. You鈥檝e got to add something else 鈥� let鈥檚 call it the anti-blue 鈥� as a contrast between them, to give them definition. Some drama.
The remarkable sea holly (they鈥檙e all great; this one is Eryngium 鈥楤lue Star鈥�) looks like a bouquet of tiny blue pineapples turned crumpets-over-teakettle rising about two feet high.
Below it 鈥� planted right by the front door of my Victorian house in rural Earlham, Iowa 鈥� I鈥檝e used little blue fescues (Festuca glauca 鈥�Elijah Blue鈥�) as a front-of-border edging.
Since Elijah tops out at only 10 inches, there is room between the ankle-high, blue leaves of grass and the knee-high, architectural Eryngium flowers of the same hue to insert this transition.
One of the sparkling pink penstemons would be dandy, as would almost anything in yellow (say, the long-blooming daylily named Happy Returns).
But the blue fescue provides its own layer of contrast soon enough in the form of its golden wheat-colored seed heads.
Subtle? Yes. But kind of dreamy, too.
NOTE: This is one of a series of Creative Combos, brief discussions about plants that look great together. You can find more and here.
