Festuca glauca Easy Blue

The 'Easy Blue' Festuca is a lovely variety of Blue Fescue, which forms a dense, tousled, bluish clump, creating a beautiful effect in the garden or in a pot. This small perennial grass, evergreen in winter, is adorned in the second half of spring with gracefully trailing silver spikelets, adding a luminous touch to the plant. Resistant and water-saving, it can be planted in borders, at the front of flower beds, in rock gardens, or in flower pots.

Native to central Europe and rocky areas of the western Mediterranean, Blue Fescue, known as Festuca glauca in Latin, has long been naturalised in various regions of the world due to its minimal soil requirements, perfect hardiness, and high drought resistance. Like many grasses, it belongs to the large family of poaceae. In nature, it grows in dry and poor soil, sandy and rocky soils, and in full sun. It has given rise to some stunning cultivars selected for their beauty.

'Easy Blue' Fescue is a non-running perennial plant that forms small, hemispherical, stiff, very dense, rounded clumps, reaching a height and width of 25-30 cm (10-12in). Its foliage consists of stiff, very fine, silvery-blue leaves covered with a waxy coating that gives it a metallic appearance, also indicating its excellent adaptation to dry environments. Flowering occurs from the end of June. Very slender, blue-coloured flower stems emerge from the center of the clump. They bear loosely arranged, silver-coloured spikes at their tips. Over time, these inflorescences turn more yellow, indicating that the seeds are ripe. These seeds are dispersed by the wind, self-seeding here and there in light soils. The lifespan of the plant is about 5 to 6 years in poor and well-drained soil.

The 'Easy Blue' Blue Fescue will easily find its place in a rock garden, a scree garden, a slope, along a path, and can even be an alternative to lawn in dry areas with moderate foot traffic. Its light spike-like flowering gives this small vegetal hedgehog a pleasantly tousled appearance that attenuates its stiffness. It can be mixed, for example, with creeping plants such as Lamb's Ears (Stachys), Erigeron karvinskianus, Gauras, Cotton Lavenders, Sages, and many others. It also adapts very well to container gardening, lightening up floral compositions or to fill the base of a small palm tree, a cactus, or an Aeonium, for example.