VMC Native Garden Perennial
Babtisia australis
False Indigo
Light: Full Sun – Part Shade
Water: Average
Soil: Medium to Dry
Hardiness Zones: 3 – 9
Height: 3 – 4 ft
Spacing: 36 – 48 in
Bloom Times: Late Spring, Early Summer
Bloom Color: Blue
Garden Use: Beautiful, architectural, background plant that can be grown in a wide variety of soils. Shrub-like perennial is useful at the back of the garden bed. Native and pollinator garden, butterfly garden, cottage garden, rock garden, wildflower garden.
Benefits: Easy to grow and low-maintenance. Can be grown in a wide range of soils, drought-tolerant, pollution-tolerant and deer and rabbit resistant. Can be propagated by seed. Attracts butterflies and birds. Award-winning 2010 Perennial Plant of the Year from Perennial Plant Association and also recipient of the Award of Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society.
Q U I C K T I P S
Butterflies and Hummingbirds love Babtisia australis (False Indigo) with its tall blue flower spikes rising above the back of the garden bed in late spring. This plant is especially useful when incorporating it into a tapestry of contrasting foliage textures and beautiful bluish-green, rounded leaves form a lovely backdrop to other perennials in the native plant garden.
Fruit pods develop over the summer and become striking architectural features in the winter garden if the not cut back before then. Plants will take on a shrubby appearance once mature and can be shaped as a rounded mound to simulate a shrub-like look.
Babtisia australis (False Indigo) is a wonderful, easy-to-grow, award-winning plant that is tolerates a wide range of conditions including: drought, deer, rabbits, rocky soil as well as clay soil. There are varieties of this species that sport yellow, purple and white blooms.