For Earth Day, I thought I highlight a flower that’s not only in my one of my favorite shades of blue but combined with green, it’s the colors of Earth. What a coincidence!

I grew lobelia two years ago but I did the silly thing of just tugging them beneath the tomato plants, thinking they’d make a great groundcover. No, they are not groundcover plants even though the variety I have is the low-growing type.

They are spillers. They like to be placed somewhere high and then spill over and that’s exactly how I’ll treat them this year. This lobelia is planted on the second tier of a 4-tier Greenstalk tower. I have another one on the top tier and another one interplanted with my container fig. I hope they spillover because that would be such a lovely thing to see.

I started all of the lobelias indoor with seeds. The seeds are very tiny that they are practically invisible. In fact, the cell in which this lobelia was supposed to be, well, I planted chives and somehow, this lobelia snuck its way in there. Can you see the chives spilling over?

Since lobelia is an annual and chives is a perennial, I’m hoping that I will be able to rid the lobelia at the end of the year and just leave the chives to grow next year. That’s my plan, at least, but I feel, just like all things gardening, nature will probably have a different plan.

We’ll see.

The Flower Hour