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You will love the blue star creeper if you want a low-maintenance indoor plant or landscape plant. The foliage displays a bright green with blue flowers and is ideal for the garden to use as a ground cover.
Today we will help you care for this easy plant to keep it growing, filling the home or landscaping with color.
More About The Isotoma Fluviatilis Blue Star Creeper
If you want to add visual interest to the yard, you will find adding the blue star creeper a perfect plant. It is a flowering bush in an evergreen form and remains pretty all year round. It grows perfectly in a foot traffic site, and gardeners will be pleased with it.
The blue star creeper blooms purple to blue star-shaped flowers in late spring and all summer long. It is an Australian native with a mound to spread growth, forming a dense mat. Growing it in heavy foot traffic is ideal as it needs less water.
It only grows three inches tall and does not need mowing. Another common name for the blue star creeper is swamp isotome. Still, these perennials become invasive in some areas, spreading freely with their underground runners.
Gardeners need to plant blue star creepers in such a way as to contain them in the yard or containers. Doing this helps prevent self-seeding, and it helps to do deadheading to prevent reseeding.
Blue Star Creeper Care
The blue star creeper plant is an easy-going plant to grow and needs minimal care once established. So, when you provide bright sunlight with partial shade, it is happy in cooler regions. Keep soil moist where possible while many say it has drought tolerance, it can result in making the plant dormant.
Plant Blue Star Creeper in The Garden or Containers for a Display of Blue Flowers
Whether you plan to grow the blue star creeper in a container or as ground cover, it makes for a beautiful display. When planted in the ground, you can place the blue star up to 18 inches apart as it can spread wide. But remember, they are not native to the USA and can become troublesome spreading through other plants.
Lighting Needs
While the blue star creeper is a hardy plant that can thrive in full sun, it prefers moist soil growing in a rock garden or pot. So, you can grow it as a lawn alternative in direct sunlight, but you will need to water them a bit more.
We recommend placing your colorful flowers in partial sunlight. Doing this helps the leave not turn brown, and those gorgeous flower buds will wither away. As a houseplant, your blue star creeper plants need at least six hours of sun exposure, or they might become leggy.
Recommended Soil
While the blue star creeper makes for a great ground cover or potted plant, it still needs suitable soil to grow. The plant is not picky as a perennial and grows in poor-quality soil as long as it has drainage allowing excess moisture away from the rhizomes.
When grown as individual plants in pots, provide your blue star creeper with well-draining soil and enough drainage holes. Another helpful tip, when grown as a groundcover, is to plant them with larger shrubs or bushes.
So for outdoor growing, provide your blue star with natural drainage to prevent water logging leading to root rot.
Watering
It thrives with medium watering needs to enjoy happy gardening with the blue star creeper. During summer, you may need to moisten the soil with regular watering to help with new growth.
Still, at the same time, you need to avoid overwatering, and growing in dense clay soil can lead to fungal diseases. So for outdoor growing, it helps to keep your blue star creeper in higher spots to prevent holding back water after it rains.
The first year of planting will need proper watering until it establishes itself. You may find that it requires little to no water during the winter months. Grown in pots, you can provide your blue star creeper with a good soak of water and leave it to dry out between watering.
Temperature and Humidity Levels
The blue star creeper can flourish in the USDA zones six to nine and is quite resilient to cold. Thus, these plants can survive below temperatures of -4°F with a snow cover. In cold climates, it is a semi-evergreen that will go dormant in the winter months.
In milder temperatures, your blue star creeper is an evergreen, but it does not enjoy intense heat for too long. The best part is that the right light and soil can thrive in wet and dry humid conditions, with the correct soil moisture needs.
Fertilizer
Your blue star creeper is a tough plant that does not need heavy feeding as it can lead to aggressive growth. You can fertilize your plant at the beginning of the growing season. The best fertilizer is a general-purpose garden fertilizer to help with strong new growth.
But you may not need to use one if the soil is rich in nutrients.
Repotting Blue Star Creeper
When you notice the roots growing outside the container, it is time to repot your blue star creeper. You can place it in a well-draining potting mix and water it lightly, and leave it to dry before watering again.
Grown outdoors, you can do some pruning of the foliage about an inch in late fall to keep your blue star creepers’ appearance tidy. The same can be done for indoor blue star creepers. While the plant does not need deadheading, it helps to prevent self-seeding from spreading and becoming invasive.
Propagating Blue Star Creeper
To propagate, you can collect blue star creeper seeds or use division. Then, as the plant spreads with rhizomes, it will extend above and below the ground and easily divide. Here is how you can do this:
Use a sharp shovel to dig around your blue star creeper root ball to preserve the most roots.
Next, separate the plants, tugging the rhizomes with the hands.
Plant them in a new location and space them up to 18 inches apart for ground covering.
Another method to propagate blue star creeper is to plant seeds. You can harvest the dry seed pods when the flower production fades on the parent plant. Then, place the seed in the general-purpose garden, fertilizer.
Moisten the soil and sow the seeds while covering them with some newspaper. Place the container in a spot with partial sunlight and not full sun. Keep moistening the soil until you see the seeds sprout.
Similar Varieties
You can find the blue star creeper in different subspecies, some of which are not readily available to buy. Furthermore, you can also find some species with nearly the same name.
White Star Creeper
While the white star is not part of the same genus as it goes by the botanical name Pratia angulata, it has similar caring needs. It also spreads and blooms white flowers in a star shape. It grows as a dense mat making for a great ground cover.
Hence, you can also grow it in heavy foot traffic. The same rules apply not to overwater as it is also susceptible to root rot.
Isotoma fluviatilis subsp. Australis
It is a subspecies of the blue star creeper with long leaves. The corolla is blue, and you can find them in pink.
Isotoma fluviatilis subsp. Borealis
The plant resembles your other blue star creepers, and the flowers bloom around long pedicels. The flowers have the same blue to purple color.
Common Pests and Diseases
While you might follow some great tips for caring for your blue star creeper in a sunny place, not too much water, fertilizing, and TLC can still get pests and diseases even as a houseplant. The blue star creeper is susceptible to fungal diseases, and soil that drains well is essential in the landscape and home.
Yet, when it comes to pests, you can feel assured that they will not attract them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Your Tiarella is low-maintenance foliage that remains undivided for many years in your garden without losing vigor. If your plant becomes tattered due to weather conditions, you can cut them back but not necessary.
In appearance, the Tiarella wherryi and Tiarella cardifolia are similar. Yet, the latter has a southern distribution more tolerant to humidity and heat. The Tiarella wherryi is also a clumper compared to the Tiarella cardifolia that is stoloniferous. Thus, the Tiarella wherryi increases in girth from its underground rhizomes. So it does not initiate runners compared to the other species.
The foamflower is a clump-forming perennial that spreads by stolons (runners) to form dense wide clumps of foliage. The plant remains evergreen in mild winters but can turn to a reddish-bronze shade in fall to winter.
The Tiarella you can find available at your local nurseries, or you can buy them from different retailers online. Still, the excellent news is you need not leave your chair as Plantly sells a wide selection of the species here.
Whether you want to buy, sell or simply reach out to other plant enthusiasts, Plantly is the right place to be!
