The blue forget-me-not flowers of Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost' show up well against the icy white marbled leaves.

THIS TIME OF year, when colorless clouds press low and any available sunlight is wan at best, bright blue seems to pull a summer sky down into the garden. If we can't have a clear sky overhead, at least we can plant blue underfoot. And true blue — not lavender, mauve or plum — is the most precious of flower colors because it's so rare.

In the February garden, blue plays off green foliage while charging up all those springtime pastels. Now and for the next couple of months when we most appreciate their spark and flash, elusive shades of cobalt, midnight, indigo, Cambridge, Wedgwood, azure and turquoise are more plentiful than any other time of the year. Although I know blue is considered to be a cool color that recedes and even casts shadows in the garden, it always reads to me as warm, juicy, immediate. Perhaps this is because of its vibrancy, its close kinship to green, or maybe just because I love it so.

Many of the early spring blues are little bulbs or small-scale perennials, so it's important to plant them en masse to create an effect. Grow your puddles of true blue close to the house, a walkway or in a pot where you'll enjoy their radiance even on the rainiest days.

JULIE NOTARIANNI /THE SEATTLE TIMES
			Now In Bloom The Japanese flowering apricot (Prunus mume) is one of the very earliest flowering trees. It is long-lived, growing very slowly to 20 feet and blooms for weeks in winter on bare branches. The small pink flowers have a rich, spicy scent and are followed by yellow, inedible fruits. P. mume 'Geisha' (above) has semi-double flowers that bloom especially early; 'Pendula' has a weeping habit, and the light-pink double flowers of 'Dawn' open more toward the end of winter.

• Forget-me-nots are one of the most nostalgic of flowers — didn't everyone's grandmother grow them, at least in our imaginations? Now that sweet baby-eye blue color is available without the lanky foliage or aggressive spreading of forget-me-nots. Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost' has nearly identical little flowers set against large, heart-shaped leaves gilded in snowy white. This hardy perennial is a 2005 Great Plant Pick for good reason: It blooms long in shady, moist conditions, with foliage that lightens the garden all summer. The straight species has the same broad leaves but in plain green, with flowers in darker blue.

• Corydalis flexuosa 'Blue Panda' begins blooming in early spring with petite, electric-blue spurred flowers set against ferny foliage; 'Golden Panda' has cobalt flowers and yellow-flushed foliage. The flowers of 'Pere David' are turquoise, while 'Rainier Blue' has frosty blue flowers.

• The only springtime flower I find as satisfyingly blue as the iconic delphinium is the old-fashioned pulmonaria or lungwort. Is there any blue as cathedral-window luminous as Pulmonaria augustifolia? P. 'Benediction' is named for Seattle gardener Loie Benedict, with silver-spotted leaves and dark-blue flowers; the dainty P. 'Munstead Blue' was selected by Gertrude Jekyll, and in P. 'Cambridge Blue' the flowers are a pale, watery blue.

• If you search catalogs, you'll find many familiar bulbs that flower blue. Perhaps most common are the grape hyacinth (Muscari) which come in pale or deeper blue, as do Chionodoxa luciliae and Scilla siberica.

• Many crocus are described as blue, but most appear more lavender to me, with perhaps the exception of the tiny Crocus biflorus or the hybrid 'Blue Bird.'

• While Iris reticulata tend toward the violet, 'Blue Veil' and 'Violet Beauty' both read as blue in the garden, perhaps because of the yellow marking on their falls. An especially showy blue, the winter iris I. unguicularis 'Variegata' has all the shades of a streaky sky on a single petal, with deep-blue blotching on soft-blue background.

• Fragrant fat heads of Hyacinth 'Blue Jacket,' 'Blue Star' or the softer 'Delft Blue' mix well with yellow narcissus and early tulips.

• A little later in the spring, slender spikes of various Camassia species hold star-like blue flowers centered with spidery yellow anthers. These are tough and lovely Northwest natives or near relatives; C. leichtlinii 'Blauwe Donau' has dark-blue flowers, C. cusickii has plentiful, smaller flowers in palest blue.

Although marketed as this most desirable of colors, the darkly saturated silky petals of Tulipa 'Blue Parrot' and 'Blue Heron' are more purple than blue. And even though we now have pink daffodils, I haven't seen one even remotely tinged in blue. Hybridizers, however, are working to produce a blue rose, so stay tuned . . . We may yet have a true-blue tulip or narcissus some spring soon.