Overview and growing conditions

Veitch’s Blue Thistle is a flowering perennial. It does best full sun and thrives in dry conditions.

When does Veitch’s Blue Thistle flower?

Veitch’s Blue Thistle flowers in mid summer. It’s flowers last for about 3 weeks. At that point the color will begin to fade and the flower ball will turn a grayish color. If you rub off the faded flowers from the ball, it will actually look a little brighter and neater for a few more weeks.

How easy is it to care for Veitch’s Blue Thistle?

Overall score: 10 (extremely easy). I have Veitch’s Blue planted in full sun, and I’ve previously had it planted in part shade. It was fine in either place. I don’t provide any extra water (beyond what it gets from rain), and it never wilts or has any issues with that. It’s somewhat slow growing in my own garden, but the benefit of this is that it doesn’t require frequent pruning or dividing.

Last year I had it planted in an area where verbena had self seeded and great a ton of new verbena plants. My Veitch’s Blue thistle was completely crowded; at one point I couldn’t even tell where the thistle was because the area was totally taken over by verbena. I worried the thistle would die back because of this, but when I cleared out the verbena, it was there growing just fine. It has proven to be indestructible in my own yard so far.

I have read that it doesn’t do well in overly wet soil or in areas of standing water. It hasn’t been exposed to too much water in my own garden so I can’t verify this, but seeing it do so well in very dry soil makes me assume that overly wet soil would be problematic for it.

Another note is that I purchased a Veitch’s Blue Thistle in root stock form years ago, planted it, and it never grew. I bought it later as a small plant and that successfully took off in my yard. It’s hard to say what the issue was with that initial purchase, but to be safe I’d recommend buying this in plant form.

Problems with Veitch’s Blue Thistle

None.