This is Spirea ‘Blue Mist’ that protects our front door from the front yard.  It is another one of the plants that bloom here on Glen Road in September.  When the blue flowers show their pretty faces, you will soon have every bee within a small radius of the house coming over to visit to collect some special end-of-the-season pollen and nectar.  The bees are so intent on collecting pollen and nectar that you can stand right next to the tree and they don’t care.  They don’t fly at you or swarm at you.  All the bees are intent on doing is collecting pollen and nectar and then going back to the hive to make preparations for the Winter.  Sometimes when there is no wind and you listen very closely, it almost sounds as if the Spirea is actually buzzing.

Our Spirea ‘Blue Mist’ is quite a grower.  By the time we hit September bloom time, the bush is over four feet high and about as many feet wide.  No matter how small I trim it down in the Winter and Spring, this Spirea always has a growth spurt in August as if to do so to show itself off to all the bees in the neighborhood.  At the start of the Spring, our Spirea ‘Blue Mist’ was pruned down to one foot tall and one foot wide.  That is some fast growing in a few short months to get to four feet and it does this in some of the hottest months of the year.

Caryopteris’s (the botanical name for Spirea ‘Blue Mist’) low mounding habit makes it perfect as a border plant for massing purposes and works wonders in dry, sunny spots.   There are blue foot-long flower spikes that cover this plant in September and this make for quite a visual display.  Spirea ‘Blue Mist’ is also many times referred to as a Bluebeard, which is not too difficult to understand where this name comes from due to the look of the blooms.

Did you ever hear of a bush that provides the house with lots of laughter?  Well, our Spirea does just that.  How?  Well, in terms of our friends, there are three groups:

1. The first group that walks past the Spirea that is filled with bees and they don’t notice a thing.
2. The second group are those people who notice the bees and take a look, but aren’t really scared
3. The last group are those people who notice the bush filled with bees and become terrified and take off running to our front door screaming and yelling for us to open up as soon as possible!

Since no one has ever gotten stung by one of the Spirea bees, we always laugh at those terrified individuals that are part of group 3.  We know it is not right, but we can’t help it.  We apologize to those folks in advance.  So if you are interested in a late-blooming bush for your garden that can also add some comedy to your every day life, give Spirea ‘Blue Mist’ a shot.  Trust us, the neighborhood will be….buzzing.  What late season bloomers do you have in your garden?