Garden Blues! (part one)

Being stuck at home sick looking out the window as the rain lashes down has made me all retrospective! So I got to thinking about all the blues in my garden this year.......
I've always had the perennial Lobelias in their blue form, but this year has seen an explosion in blue flowers in my little patch.
The first one to land in the garden this year was Aconitum cammarum "Stainless Steel".....

Apart from the initial flush of flowers I was a little disappointed with it, until the other day when I was planting bulbs - the tuber has spread under the soil about six inches in all directions, so hopefully there should be quite a display next year. All that after I went to the trouble of collecting seed from it to increase my stock!

Later in the year I added two more Aconitums; the first was bought at a school fete, labelled simply as Aconitum "Sparks Variety".........

.........with the third and final newbie being A.fischerii "Azure Monkshood"...........

All they seem to need is a little shade and a reasonable amount of moisture. One of the joys of them is how they glisten when the sun catches them (open the third photo in a new tab to get the full effect).

The blue Penstemons have been around for years, and this first one came from a cutting so I don't have a name for it............

The pastel colours of it are such a contrast to my other blue Penstemon, P.heterophyllus "Electric Blue".....

This has a reputation for being a little tender, which is unfair - since I grew this from seed it has been the most prolific flowering Penstemon that I've seen, and survived being dug up when I moved house in the middle of a frosty February. Despite the flowers and the plant being small (the whole plant stands at less than 30cm) it more than holds it's own against the larger stuff around it! I've lost count of the number of cuttings that I've had to give away.

To keep this at a reasonable length, I'll add one more for now; Cerinthe major.......

It may be stretching the blue theme a bit (although one of its common names is Blue Shrimp plant), but I was so pleased that it made a re-appearance this year (whilst it's not a hardy perennial it self seeds reliably) after not germinating last year! Weird how the seeds can sit dormant for a whole year without doing anything, and then decide to germinate!