This is rapidly becoming my most favorite plant in the garden. Attributes that I love:

Long blooming
No supplemental water needed after second season (it will share its resentment of being watered too much by flopping over)
Hummingbirds flock to this plant favoring it over feeders
Will take the brunt of the hot summer sun

I wanted to share how I grow these. I created several penstemon beds where the medium is a gravely red breeze. That's it. No soil mixes, no nutrients, nothing. I kept them well watered the first two seasons and now they thrive without any help from me. The more you ignore them, the more they like it seems.

I tend to leave the seed heads in place. If you do that, you will be rewarded by many more plants. Oh! And, I have found that they truly are not picky about where they grow. I have a large specimen that started as a volunteer growing in a mass of river pebbles. The only water it has ever received is what falls out of the sky.

I truly feel that penstemons belong in all gardens.

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"Penstemon eatonii is a species of penstemon known by the common name firecracker penstemon. It is native to the western United States from California to the Rocky Mountains, where it grows in many types of desert, woodland, forest, and open plateau habitat. It is a perennial herb producing several sprawling to erect stems reaching one meter in maximum height. The leaves are lance-shaped to oval, untoothed, and up to 9 centimeters in length. The inflorescence produces showy tubular flowers in shades of bright red, sometimes exceeding 3 centimeters in length. The flower is narrow and cylindrical, not spreading much at the mouth."

Taken from wikipedia's page at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

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