Wednesday Garden Pics: Blue Stokes Aster & More

I continue to work on adding things to my various rain gardens. Yesterday I was moving some young native orange lilies into place down the length of the outside of flag stones edging the back yard rain garden.
 I'm excited to see the grassy shoots of the rain lilies I planted in there starting to popped up and look forward to taking pictures of them in bloom. 

I've decided to move some of my Chocolate Elephant Ears into the gravel portion of that rain garden to pick up the color of the Giant Red Leaf Tropical Lily. 

Today's feature Garden Pic is the first blooms of my Blue Stokes Aster:

I bought it at Lowe's last fall, splitting it into 3 sections when I planted it. It's a full sun perennial that spreads, so I was deliberate on where I planted it.
Though classed as 'blue' you can tell this blue leans to the lavender, but that is very common in flower color classifcation. After all, purple has an element of blue in it! That's why you'll find so many flowers classed as "blue" that have varying degrees of a lavender or purple tone to them, such "blue" iris or roses, etc.
True blues are comparatively few in number compared to other colors in nature. I planted a Plumbago shrub yesterday that hosts blooms that are, indeed, a true baby blue and Delphinium, Hydrangeas, Bacholar Buttons (cornflower), Agapanthus & blue Balloon Flowers are other examples of truer blue bloomers.

Next: A incidental red, white and blue theme looking across my front bed:

By incidental, I mean these various flowers usually bloom sequentially; not at the same time. But the long cold of this past winter caused everything to bloom a tad later then normal, so they're over-lapping this year.
The bluish Siberian iris in the middle there are actually about done blooming and the Easter lilies are just opening. I was lucky to catch this shot of red, white & blue!

Last, a morning shot of one of my other rain gardens, this one on the north corner:

The trellis supports a red climbing rose I need to snip today, so it will bloom again.

Behind that trellis is a Lady fern, a blue hydrangea that is still small, a pony tail asparagus fern, some Common Ajuga ground cover that loves it back there and is going crazy, plus new yellowish variegated Hosta.

 (You can see my giant Hostas & landscape ivy in the back ground.)
I also moved some Agapanthus (Lily of the Nile) that wasn't in a happy place to the outer edge of this rain garden in back.

Right next to the trellis, the purple grass there, is new Red Fountain Grass I just planted. The Fireworks Grass I've used in the past just keeps dying over winter, so time to try something else.Several Black Eyed Susan's are in the gravel in front and there's actually a tiny baby Mexican Heather there, too. 

I started this one last fall and it has continued to take shape! 
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