Objective: Fall planting Ca Natives,…and to have fun! Each October, on my birthday weekend, a favorite nursery plans it’s annual celebration and harvest festival. I’m so flattered! But really, since Fall is the best time to plant here in the foothills, I go to this event for fun and also with an objective. The objective…
Celebrating a fine nursery… Have you been here? I hope so! We are very fortunate to have a nursery nearby that purchases and grows plants that are perfect for our foothill gardens. Besides having a wide variety of California native and drought tolerant Mediterranean plants, Bonnie Bladen, her husband Ray Laclergue and their staff are…
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”. …
