Growing penstemons in the Colorado foothills

In spite of high winds & a foot of snow in May, these flowers are radiant in my foothills garden!

/ Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

This morning the Rocky Mountain Penstemons are smiling BIG TIME…

As I move from east to west this plant, that got eaten last year by I don’t know what, is raring to grow.

I love to watch the serendipity of plantings from years past. For example, I had no idea this combination of these little yellow flowers, the Penstemon pinifolius (red), the RM penstemon (purple) and lavender would look so good together this year. I’m not smart enough to plan that!

And these were all planted at different times too. At first I had too much purple and the interesting Knautia macedonica ‘Red Knight’ plant, so I added a yellow yarrow right in the middle. And in spite of high winds and a foot of snow on May 22nd, everything survived!

One thing I have learned, plants need to be quite resilient to survive the wild and windy weather up here!

Penstemons are my friends!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 1 Comment

After five years of trying to get a Colorado foothills garden going, I have discovered how much I LOVE Penstemons!

First of all, I have a very early blooming native, I believe it is Penstemon buckleyi, that volunteers as one of the earliest blooms in my garden!

Then I started some Penstemon Strictus (Rocky Mountain Penstemon) four years ago and look at them now! They also bloom quite early, in mid-May. They spread nicely too!

This year I bought two new versions that are supposed to be red. My garden is almost all purple at this point in time.

Amazingly, the Red Riding Hood variety (Schmidel?) is already in full bloom!

I also bought two Penstemon pinifolius and put them in. According to my book exclusively on Penstemons, “Penstemon pinifolius is an attractive low-growing evergreen plant with showy, scarlet flowers in June to August.” Mine are just tiny this year. I hope they bloom next year!

My point is that these are the kind of plants to grow here because they are natives! The critters don’t eat them (at least not so far…). They spread nicely and fill up their space by a foot or two, and they love it here!

Want to learn lots more about penstemons? This is a wonderful book for that purpose: Penstemons: The Beautiful Beardtongues of New Mexico.