I love penstemons the ones that do well here in my northern garden are the old husker's red, dark towers and mystica. This year I found a new that has the red stems and have ordered it from Klehm's Song Sparrow it is named Pocahontas it gets 36-48 inches tall. I am excited about having a new penstemon in my garden.

Wow, that one is a beauty. I am getting more and more into the penstemmons. I have a couple that are doing well, but this touch of purple with the red stems is very desirable, I think. My goal this year is to continue to add more purple and chartreuse/lime/citrus green (whatever you call it) plants to my gardens and yard.

Please post photos as yours grows and blooms. Thanks for sharing this.

The only penstemons that survive in my garden are those with the touch of purple in the foilage. I have tried a couple of the more colorful blooms with green foilage, they just don't survive here. I will try to remember to take photos and post them.

I have trouble with Penstemon too. I think in winter they like a bit of snow cover, that we mostly never get. The freezing and thawing does them in.

Not sure why the green foilage ones don't like my garden the others have been in my garden for at least a couple of years. Some winters we have consistent snow cover but not always and we do have plenty of freeze and thaw. Guess I will just be happy with the ones that do grow here, the foilage looks nice all summer with the purplish color and the blooms are nice softer colors.

On a normal winter, we have only a few days of snow cover, and constant freeze/thaw cycles. My penstemons not only thrive, but self-seed everywhere! Husker Red is 3' tall now, blooming like crazy, and it is 100 yards away from where I planted the first one 3 years ago. (Winter of 2010, temps got down to 17 below, so i know these are very hardy. We had no snow cover when we had the extreme low temps.)
I think they are crossing, too, because I have some newer shades of purple and pink that came out of the Pikes Peak purple .

Two kinds of native penstemons are blooming, so pretty!