Mine is 3 years old and only 2.5' tall. It seems to stay that size ball in my garden. I treat it as just another mounding perennial and plant around it. With my soil it is pink to mauve.

I think you can do both. I bought one online and it came last week and it was in excellent condition, bushy and full of blooms! I put it on the east side of the house where it will get filtered sun and shade. Next year I plan on buying many more to line the house with, and to put in my flowergarden as a stand alone with other flowers around it.

It takes a lot of water, so don't forget to water it everyday. I water mine twice a day in this heat. So far it hasn't wilted and seems to be thriving.

They're one of my new favorite plants!

I have two in big clay pots on each side of my front porch steps. Mine are blue and covered with blooms. Last year I fed them a little too much aluminum sulphate to make them blue and they got burned and lost most of the leaves, but this year they came back vigorously and are huge and the most beautiful blue. The trouble with one of mine is that it gets so heavy with flowers the stems droop and the middle looks funny. I solved this by tying them up to a wrought iron stake in the middle.

You know if you want more of these, they are really easy to propagate. I've had great success with rooting cuttings of them, so that I could plant them in other parts of the yard. And I've shared them with family. The cuttings you do this year will be big enough to plant out the next year.

Susie

I just saw these (this morning) highly praised on HGTV by that goofy garden guy. Can't think of the name of the show. But he raved over these. He even showed a nursery of them.

Jim