Blue and White Border

[DancingHares]

Our family has just moved into a small bungalow in southern England with a large and sunny garden front and back of the house.

We're relatively inexperienced gardeners who previously had a small north facing garden. We'd now like to plant up the circular border surrounding our lawn with bulbs and herbaceous perennials (for the most part) and we'd like the flower colours to be either blue or white. Our first thoughts are plants like alliums, Forget-Me-Nots, geraniums, but we'd really like to get some more suggestions. We don't mind a bit of maintenance but ideally would prefer perennial plants or easy annuals as our budget is limited.

Does anyone have some star performers they could recommend?

Delphiniums! You can get different sizes from tall to shorter, and different shades. My favourite flower. My garden is mostly blues, purples and pinks. Hydrangeas if you have the right soil, Himalayan poppies, clematis.

I bought a blue Penstemon last year that was really pretty plus I also have nepeta, a blue geranium, Rozanne is the popular one, I'm not sure what mine is as it was given to me. I also have lavender and ceonothus and in spring masses of forget me nots. All are blue.

I don't have very much white but I do have a Veronica which is white and is in flower now and comes up every year. The Phildelphus is also just coming into flower.

Lavender, aquilegia, blue lupins, blue dahlias, delphiniums, white tulips, white irises, snowdrops, white / blue crocusses, hyacinths, hydrangea. Personally I think a mix of colours looks nicer though ;-).

Blue and white is a good colour scheme but it needs either yellow or red specimens in there to give it some drama. Blue, white and the bright orange california poppies which would self seed each year would be a super mix.

Erysimum White Dame would be one I'd add

White flowered small shrubs - cistus and convolvulus cneorum
white umbellifers, ie plants that look like cow parsley which are so delicate and airy

What sort of soil have you got?

Shrubs and perennials:
White shrub roses underplanted with nepeta
White foxgloves
persicaria amplexicaulis alba
Veronicastrum
Salvias
Lupins
Philadelphus
Viburnum opulus (snowball flowers)
Ceonothus
Amelanchier
Agapanthus
Siberian irises
Japanese anemones
Hardy geraniums (Rozanne is the longest flowering)
Gillenia trifoliata
Vinca
Erigeron karvinskianus
Chicory
Baptisia australis
Delphiniums
Anthriscus Ravenswing
Bearded iris (White City is a great one)
Centranthus ruber albus
Gaura
Cenolophium denudatum
White oriental poppies
Hellebores

Bulbs:
Narcissus thalia
White camassia
Alliums
Tulip spring green/white valley etc

Easy Annuals:
Ammi
Orlaya
Daucus
Cosmos
Cynoglossum amabile
Linum
Gypsophila

Delphinium are gorgeous but quite susceptible to slugs and snails 🐌

Don't forget to add in a few evergreen shrubs so that you have some structure all year round rather than bare earth. Euonymous Silver Simon is a good green and white shrub and Ceanothus has blue flowers. Convulvulus Cneorum produces white flowers all summer long and will love your sunny spot.

There is a beautiful ground cover evergreen plant called Lithodora Heavenly Blue that is the most stunning blue.

Camassias, Geranium 'Johnson's Blue', Russian Sage and Veronicas are all lovely blue plants. How about white roses?

If you like blue foliage, look for plants with 'glauca' in the name - it's a lovely bluish green.

B&Q are probably cheaper than your local garden centre. Anywhere that sells plants usually has a 'casualty' section where you can pick up cheap as chips plants that often just need a little trim, a good soak with water and 24 hours resting in a shady spot.

Dig in a few bags of well rotted manure before you start planting. Your plants will thank you for it and it will only cost a tenner.

Finally, look out for charity plant sales. There were three in my small town on Saturday and I filled two big baskets with plants for £14. Happy planting.

Lots of good suggestions here from Turkeyhen

Agree about delphiniums - they would just be slug food here!

We have loads of self seeded blue nigella (love in the mist) at the moment - they give a lovely soft effect with the foliage. And a few self seeded (orange) Californian poppies for a bit of contrast. Johnsons blue is another good hardy geranium.

Most 'blue' plants are actually more like lilac coloured. Alliums are a good example, although caeruleum is actually blue.

Ceratostigma plumbaginoides is a true blue. So is lithodora.

I agree that you should have some flashes of contrast to make the whole thing pop, or it risks looking washed out.

I forgot about ceratostigma plumbaginoides, that's a lovely one, true blue flowers and it flowers fairly late too when a lot of the others may have gone over. Also ceratostigma willmottanium (sp?) is the shrub version. Flowers late summer into autumn.

Agree also with pp about glaucous foliage plants - silver leaved plants would look lovely too - eleagnus quicksilver, artemisia etc.

Wow, so many responses already! Thank you to you all!

I should have said what our soil type is. We haven't tested it yet, but I've a feeling it is very slightly acid. It's also more sandy than clay-like in texture and drains pretty well although the lawn is a little mossy in places.

I'll be spending the rest of today looking up most of those plants. From seeing a few gardens we liked last year, we found that repeating a relatively small selection of plants throughout the bed in groups might look better than trying to cram in loads of single specimens. We have noticed that there is a slug problem but it (hopefully) isn't major.

Easy and reliable blue ones are brunnera and centaurea (perennial cornflower).

I have lots of blues, purples & whites:

Nepeta
Salvia
Choisya - has lovely smelling white flowers
Muscari
Wild garlic
Verbenas
Erigeron (Mexican Fleabane)
Eryngium (Sea Holly)
Lupins
Hollyhocks
Roses
Wild strawberries
Foxgloves
Brunnera
Pulmonaria
Buddleia
Lavender
Hardy geraniums
Agapanthus
Aqiguela
Geum
Iris
Scabios
Almeria
Broom
Ajuga
Alliums
Saracoccoca
Hellebores
Jasmine
Valerian
Phlox
Lithodora
Borage
Hyssop
Mallow

Brunnera