St. Johnswort Blue Velvet
* Common name: St. Johnswort Blue Velvet(TM)
St. Johnswort ‘Blue Velvet’
* Botanical name: Hypericum kalmiatum
* What it is: A long-blooming, mounding, flowering shrub that has blue-green leaves all season, yellow flowers throughout most of summer, and red berries in fall. Good enough to earn a 2013 Gold Medal award from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. A variety of a U.S. native species.
* Size: 3 to 4 feet tall and wide.
* Where to use: Good choice for sunny to partly shaded mixed gardens, such as along a border or in an island bed. Attractive enough for use in house-foundation beds and can be massed on a bank or in the dappled shade under trees.
* Care: Cut winter-killed branches back to about 6 inches at winter’s end. New shoots will poke up late in spring. St. Johnsworts are slow to come back to life, so be patient. Scatter a balanced, organic, granular fertilizer around the base of plants at the end of winter. Keep damp the first season, then these need water only in a bad drought.
* Great partner: Yellow or red coreopsis, daylilies or mums are good perennial partners. The rounded habit of St. Johnswort also pairs well with ornamental grasses and narrow, upright evergreens, such as columnar boxwood or juniper.