Aquilegia Blue Star - Columbine

Aquilegia 'Blue Star' is part of a series of hybrid cultivars selected for their large flowers that widely open outward, offering pure and fresh colours. This one offers simple and bicoloured flowers, composed of a lavender blue crown adorned with a long spur surrounding a small white corolla. It blooms from spring to the end of summer, with adorable grey-blue-green ferny foliage. It is a very hardy perennial, as easy to grow as wild columbine. This charming and unassuming plant is really easy to grow in the sun, in any moist soil. Its flowers are perfect in country bouquets.

Aquilegia Blue Star belongs to the buttercup family. It is a cultivar derived from Aquilegia caerulea, undoubtedly the most beautiful of wild columbines, native to the Rocky Mountains in the United States. It is a very hardy herbaceous perennial, forming an upright, leafy clump, 40cm (16in) high and 30cm (12in) wide from which long flower stems branch upwards. From May to June, up to 60cm (24in) tall stems rise, at the top of which charming blue and white single flowers, 10cm (4in) wide, with long horned spurs, bloom. Its deciduous blue-green foliage is quite decorative, and the cut of the basal leaves gives a sense of lightness.

Columbines were cultivated in flowerbeds in The Middle Ages, and cottage gardens have perpetuated the tradition. Compact and unassuming, they are essential in mixed borders, where they will bring lightness and charm. They can be planted in many places in the garden, taking care to leave a space of 20cm (8in) around each plant: in the middle of a perennial bed, in a border, at the foot of bushes, along the edge of a woodland or on a slope. They will be magnificent planted in groups to obtain a beautiful dense clump. Pick them when they are barely open for beautiful country bouquets. In flower beds, with a 'cottage garden' spirit, 'Blue Star' can be associated with all kinds of perennials, such as Foxgloves, Bleeding Hearts or Peach-leaved Bellflowers. Make beautiful bouquets with its flowers, combining them with peonies, lilacs, thistles...