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is that the colour of the flower leaches down the stems so the whole thing is suffused with blueEryngium bourgattii - the best blue of them all. A sort of steely azure as cold (yet devastatingly alluring) as the eyes of a mermaid. The best is probably one called

Korean chrysanthemums. (Moderation was not an abiding principle in the design of this garden.) Some in full flower, some in bud and in every colour you can think of except blue. At the entrance chrysanthemums blended beautifully with cannas, plectranthus

iris). The flowers vary in colour from pale blue to deep violet, with yellow-spotted splashes down each petal.Some of them share names with the engines of Rev. Wilbert Awdry, so we have I. reticulata 'Edward' and I. reticulata 'Gordon' although, sadly

woad body paint terrorising Romans. The plant from which this comes is Isatis tinctoria and, oddly, it is not even faintly blue, but very yellow.I was reminded of this by a quick preview visit to Jekka McVicar's stand at this year's Chelsea Flower Show

, indeed, an extraordinarily fine plant (I have it self seeding in the gravel outside my office). Pretty well everybody also knows about Verbena bonariensis which is one of the finest herbaceous plants ever invented: it flowers for ages (from about July

for the one with the AGM sticker. But back to my confusing list of alliums, I notice that there are fifteen AGM plants. To make your job of choosing them even simpler, here are my top five:Allium caeruleum: a late-flowering, small-headed blue variety. Height 0

this tree will have two sorts of berries: blue-black sloes and deep red haws.It is an example of a 'husband and wife tree'. This is quite a well-documented phenomenon, which can occur when trees are planted as whips, very close together, and grow up entwined