Scabious Butterfly Blue Ground Cover
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Scabious Butterfly Blue (Pincushion Flower) Scabiosa Butterfly Blue
Scabious Butterfly Blue ground cover is a delightful long flowering perennial. As their common name Pincushion Flower suggests, Scabious Butterfly Blue produce an abundance of delightful pin-like, lavender-blue flowers on top of wiry stems that grow between one and two feet high. They have slender, almost ferny leaves of a grey-green colour that come through in early Spring.
Although essentially a meadow flower, Scabious Butterfly Blue (Pincushion Flower) look just as appealing in borders, cottage gardens or gravel and rock gardens as they do in a wildflower mix. Scabious makes an excellent fill-in plant, looking good planted among grasses or mixed flowering perennials and annuals. They also make a fantastic cut flower with a long vase life. The nectar-rich flowers are very attractive to butterflies and bees and the seeds are good for birds.
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Scabious Butterfly Blue flower best in full sunlight and have a long flowering period throughout Summer and Autumn (deadhead them regularly to encourage more blooms!). Scabious ground cover are easy to care for and require very little maintenance. They will thrive in well drained, neutral to alkaline soils in full sun. Give them a good soaking of water when planting and getting established, and then you should only need to supplement rainwater during dry spells. If clumps of Scabiosa become congested, we recommend dividing them every 3-4 years.
As a rough guide when planting Scabious as ground cover – 4 plants per square metre is adequate with a little patience, 6 will give better coverage, and 9-12 will make a weed supressing carpet very quickly.
How to grow Scabious
Position: Full Sun
Foliage: Perennial
Soil and site: well drained, neutral to alkaline soils
Flowering time: July to September
Growth rate: Moderate
Ultimate height and spread: Height to 40cm, spread to approximately 40cm
Hardiness: Fully hardy once established
Aftercare: Deadhead spent flowers regularly to encourage more blooms. Divide overcrowded plants every few years.
