Does anyone here grow it? There is one old thread I found that mentions it, but nothing recent. I am curious about its ease of growth (or lack thereof) and hardiness.

I suppose I am a bit frightened of gentians since I have always heard they are difficult and fussy.

Your soil may be fairly different from mine since the parts of the Great Lakes area that I know have neutral to alkaline clay soil, so hopefully someone will respond with more similar growing condition to yours.

Funny I came across this thread having bought one a few weeks back and it is still in its pot, still unplanted. I made this impulse purchase not knowing where I would put it but I had always thought that it was a plant that could still thrive in some shade. Is this not the case?

Is it's habit upright and tight?

Find gentians long lived perennials. I've never grown them from seed, but apparently they're slow to get established.

Find 'True Blue' may flop a bit. Big flowers. Don't like the spent flowers (not self-cleaning), but they're not as in-your-face as say, spent balloon flower flowers.

To me, the flowers of Gentiana dahurica may be an even truer blue.

Checked ours yesterday and they still have blooms on them; dark day and the cups aren't open. They've now had bloom on them for at least two months.

I've trimmed about a third of this one away.

The crested gentian still has some blooms on it, but the other gentians long finished blooming.

One is much smaller than the other, is still upright and doesn't look healthy to me (yellowish leaves). It may be somewhat shaded by an adjacent daylily, which I need to divide.

The other, picture below, today, looks quite healthy and is rather trailing.

For the time they bloom, perhaps statements like "perfectly proportioned for the middle of the flower bed" are geared more to sales than anything else.