Blues don’t come any richer than the flower colour of Lithodora ‘Grace Ward’. This low, dense, ground cover plant has attractive dark green foliage all year, then over many weeks in spring it’s smothered with small flowers which are a wonderful sky blue. This cold hardy plant is perfect as a weed suppressing cover plant for sunny situations in the garden. It’s good on banks and walls and a drift of it beside a path is breathtaking. It grows easily in any reasonable soil, appreciating watering during prolonged dry spells.
Because blue is a great colour for combining with other flowers, it’s hard to go wrong when placing Lithodora ‘Grace Ward’ with other plants. It looks stunning with lime green flowers, such as the new, compact growing, Euphorbia characias ‘Kea’, and the old favourite Euphorbia polychroma. Or be bold and mix it with orange and apricot, colours found among wallflowers, especially the perennial variety Erysimum ‘Apricot Twist’.
Include other blue flowers to add to the intrigue. Low, bushy, Ceanothus ‘Blue Sapphire’ has flowers of a similar blue colour and flowers at the same time, so it’s an interesting companion plant, as are lavenders, especially the lower growing, English varieties such as ‘Foveaux Storm’.
White and blue flowers are good companions too. Try Lithodora ‘Grace Ward’ with white marguerite daisies, the pretty white flowers of Convolvulus cneorum which is a dwarf, prolific blooming, grey foliaged shrub.
Plants with bold foliage which is blue or silver are also most attractive to grow with Lithodora ‘Grace Ward’. Try it with succulents which have blue tonings, such as Echeveria ‘Blue Curl’, in the foreground of Astelia ‘Silver Spears’, or with the superb new Euphorbia ‘Silver Swan’ which has cream and grey-green foliage and heads of palest lime flowers.
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Schemes & Themes
using Liddle Wonder Plants