What's in Bloom: False Indigo

I realized the other day that a lot blue and purple things were blooming all at once in my garden, including lavender, catmint, sage, meadow sage, Jacob’s ladder, spiderwort and irises. I would like to say this was planned carefully by me, this show of complementary colors. But actually, the whole thing was really a serendipitous accident. I think mostly I just like cool colors, and a lot of them happen to bloom at the same time of year.


This has been an especially spectacular year for my False Indigo (Baptisia australis). It has been blooming for weeks now, and its brilliant blue blossoms have attracted the attention of a trio of red admiral butterflies that have been hanging around the last few days or so.

False indigo is a great plant for the urban DC garden. I have seen it hold up through terrible droughts, and flourish in wet rainy seasons. It is not picky about soil and will adapt to many poor, gravelly locations. Butterflies and bees both seem to like its nectar, and it needs no staking. It does not seem to have any significant pest problems in the city, nor does it fall ill from any common diseases.

Its in the pea family, which means it’s also a nitrogen fixer. Its flowers are wonderful, but later in the summer the dark black seed pods produce another season of interest. My kids always love those seeds; they have been used hundreds of times as fake money during sessions of “store” in my back yard because they seem to remind children of coins somehow. The seeds come loose once the fall arrives, and “jingle” around inside the pods, which is part of their appeal, I guess.

The spot it occupies at the silt-y edge of our aging patio would probably not host much else, and few other plants would do such a great job of deflecting and shielding the rest of the garden from my son’s soccer and baseballs, which seem destined to careen into the plants about three times an hour. With the False Indigo in place, none of the fragile plants further back in the garden get harmed. I could easily picture this plant doing really well at the edge of a busy sidewalk on a hot, sunny corner, where busy pedestrians would probably stop to admire its fantastic vivid color all through the month of May.

False indigo’s one and only fault seems to be its enormous size. My one little quart-sized plant has grown in just a few short years to resemble a good sized shrub. If I was to measure from above from the tip of one side to the tip of the other the diameter would probably be about four feet across. When planting this one, think as if you are planting an enormous blue azalea and you’ll be okay for size.