In our third year of drought in the Sierra foothills, we search for ways to allow our gardens to survive. Here, you’ll see how to make your garden thrive! Learn which plants to grow, how to water and how to preserve that water once it’s in the soil. Included is a print and keep ‘ideal’…
Canyon Live-forever or Rock Lettuce, Dudleya cymosa, is a great California native for containers. This container is a brick found at the lake and probably used as an anchor along the shore. I found a better use for it and planted a small dudleya in each opening. It’s lived happily here for two years,…
Growing California Fuchsia is like hanging out a neon sign to a certain pollinator, namely hummingbirds! It also fills a need many native plant gardeners have of maintaining a colorful garden all year and Zauschneria fits that description. The red, red-orange, pink, or white blossoms — sized just for a hummingbird’s beak — open in…
It’s California Native Plant Week and I’m profiling a different California native each day that is on my particular wish list. If you live in an area considered Mediterranean, you’ll be able to grow these, too. Today’s plant is Foothill Penstemon.
Foothill penstemon, Penstemon laetus
Maybe because blue is a favorite color, maybe because I had not grown penstemon much in the past and maybe because it is a penstemon first seen and purchased at a favorite nursery, I fell hard for Foothill penstemon, Penstemon laetus, also called Mountain blue penstemon or Gay Penstemon.
The genus, Penstemon, or Beard-tongue, is a common garden perennial, offered in so many colors and cultivars, but in California the native penstemons are nearly as varied. Penstemons normally have one large, sterile, furry stamen that pokes out to attract pollinators to the other four smaller fertile stamens (the name Penstemon means “Five Stamens”). “Laetus” means “bright” or “vivid”. …
Caring for native trees in the garden …and a list of what to plant When faced with a new, mountain or rural garden, you need to make peace with your oaks and pines. These beautiful trees can be unkempt, stickery and surrounded by brush and poison oak at the start. I wondered what could be…
