Moody Blues is a blue-eyed grass, an iris relative that grows as a neat tuft of narrow, grass-like foliage about a foot tall, dotted with small violet-blue starry flowers from spring into summer. It reads as a tidy, fine-textured accent rather than a sprawler.

Give it sun to part sun and well-drained soil; it dislikes winter wet more than summer heat. Use it along path edges, in rock gardens, or in drifts at the front of a border. Deer and rabbits leave it alone, and butterflies find the flowers.