First Editions® Sapphire Surf™ Bluebeard

The weather is cooling off in late summer and early fall. It's a perfect time to entertain family and friends. How does your landscape look at this time of year? If you need more late-season color to perk up your parties, just add Sapphire Surf™ Bluebeard from First Editions®. You'll easily brighten your landscape with mounds of deep, ocean-blue flowers, fragrant foliage, and butterflies!

Try First Editions® Sapphire Surf™ Bluebeard (Caryopteris x clandonensis 'Blauer Splatz') and catch a wave of beautiful deep ocean blue flowers from top to bottom in late summer and through fall - a time when not much else is going on in the garden!

You'll love the flower power of the masses of cool flowers! The blooms are perfect landing pads for pretty butterflies to feast on the welcome nectar. They'll love dancing over the tops of these plants.

Dark green leaves have a fantastic silvery and grayish overcast, becoming the perfect foil. They are a super contrast against the rich blue flowers that grow along the branch tips. This easy-care gem is a compact, low-maintenance shrub!

Also known as Blue Spirea, the blooms provide an astonishing range of lavender blues that age into brilliant indigo blue tones. Each flower will be slightly different and unique. Low maintenance, rabbit and deer-resistant, and beautiful! What more could you ask for in a garden flower? You will love this plant!

Planting and Application:

Be honest … Could you use some help cooling a hot, dry garden at the end of a long summer? Try this truly beautiful plant, and Sapphire Surf™ will thrill you in your garden border, in pots, or in landscape beds! Add several plants as "Thrillers" in big, colorful containers anywhere in your landscape. They will perform beautifully on the pool deck or on either side of your entryway.

Why not use a few in each of your landscape plantings? You'll unify the look across the property and help butterflies and beneficial insects at the same time! Pair with Butterfly Bush, Sedum, Aster, Coneflower, and Rudbeckia for a butterfly nectar station.

It has a refined, yet informal look and can be used in place of a Boxwood hedge in those hot sunny areas that can use some color. Let this silvery colored plant encase your rectangular bed filled with spring flowering bulbs and annuals, or your favorite perennials. They also make great facer plants for Roses.

Plant them and sit back and enjoy the fall show. They'll delight you as a rounded mass of fragrant, gray-green foliage all summer. Sapphire Surf™ Bluebeard makes a fantastic edging shrub for the front of the Cottage garden, mixed border, and is the perfect plant to include with your perennial gardens!

Everyone always has those hot spots in their landscapes where nothing seems to do well. Try this First Editions® Bluebeard selection! Plant a long row along a hot dry sidewalk, in a Rock Garden, or as a low hedge near your patio and pathways!

Use these compact shrubs in a mass planting as a beautiful groundcover. Don't forget to add a row along the front of your sunny foundation areas where you need a shorter flowering plant. You'll easily find a place to tuck one, two, or thirty in your yard! Space shrubs 1 to 2 feet apart in full sun.

Overall, Sapphire Surf™ Bluebeard is a magnificent, low-maintenance shrub that produces wonderful summer-to-fall flowers. It looks good all year. Even in winter, the branches will catch and sculpt the snow or frost. The bare branch structure is dense and beautiful and makes a pretty picture.

• Bountiful Rich Blue Flowers in Late Summer & Fall
• Fragrant Silvery Green Leaves
• Compact Smaller Size
• Butterfly Magnet!
• Great In Containers, Edging, Beds & Borders, & Groundcover

#ProPlantTips for Care:

This easy-care, deciduous flowering plant has few pests or problems. Blooming best in full sun in cooler USDA growing zones 5 and 6, they'll take partial/afternoon shade in Zones 7 to 9. Sapphire Surf™ Bluebeard will grow in any soil, except wet soils. It will thrive in soil that drains well.

Give large containers adequate drainage. Raise the container onto a circle of bricks so the water can drain freely from the bottom. We don't recommend using a saucer underneath outdoor plants, so place your container where the drain water won't cause a problem. All plants appreciate 3-4 inches of arborist mulch over their roots.

Give your new plants a moderate amount of water during the first season to get their roots established in your soil. Once the plants are growing well, they'll become drought-tolerant. Baby them a bit in their first few seasons!

In colder hardiness zones, there may be some winter dieback on the branch tips. Bluebeards are deciduous shrubs that can act like a woody perennial in colder areas with perfect success year after year. Simply give this little shrub a pruning early in the spring as it starts to grow. In early spring, cut your Sapphire Surf™ 4 - 6 inches from the ground just as it starts to grow.

Then, watch it shoot up new growth each year! The plants bloom on new growth, so this hard pruning makes the flower display better every year. Then, just leave it alone! You will be rewarded with a phenomenal flower display from late summer into fall.

• Very Easy Care - Thrives in Hot, Dry, Full Sun & Some Part Shade
• Any Well-Drained Soil
• Moderate Moisture Needs
• Blooms On New Wood - Prune Back Early Spring
• Deciduous Shrub But Dies Back Like A Perennial
• Virtually Pest Free - Rabbits & Deer Seem To Leave This Plant Alone

Plant First Editions® Sapphire Surf™ Bluebeard to liven up your late-season garden and attract beautiful butterflies in droves! The lovely wave of blue flowers that grow up and along the branch tips make an eye-catching display and absolutely cover this compact cutie. Order yours today!