Florist Christchurch New Zealand News

Penstemons flowers New Zealand

Flowers that perform reliably season after season are worth their weight in gold.

If you have always wanted to plant perennials but are not sure where to start, try growing beard tongues, penstemons. These glorious summer-flowering plants are reliable performers each season and they thrive under adversity. These flowers are more suitable to the garden than the florist. Even though Christchurch does have frosts, growing penstemons is easy. Read on.

There is a penstemon to suit all sorts of different situations - rockeries, containers and hanging baskets, as a statement among low-maintenance plants, or as a mass of colour in a perennial border.

Penstemons are extremely floriferous, producing flowers from early summer. Regular dead-heading will help to keep them flowering well into autumn.

The flower spikes themselves are very elegant, lending softness to plantings, while the lush, healthy foliage acts as a perfect foil for other plants.

Preferring full sun or, in some cases, partial shade, these hardy perennials will do well in any well-drained soil. They also thrive in Moutere clay, which is a wonderful bonus.

The only area they won't like is one that becomes waterlogged in winter, as this can cause the base of the clump to rot.

Before planting, it is important to dig the site over so the soil is as friable as possible.

The more friable your soil, the easier it is for penstemons to produce strong, healthy roots - becoming well established in a short time. If planting in Moutere clay, digging through some gypsum will help to break the clay particles up.

It's a good idea not to overdo any application of compost or manure because penstemons do very well in soils that have slightly low fertility - in fact, they produce more flowers when they are slightly under stress.

Some perennials can take a couple of seasons to put on a really good show of flowers, but it is possible to have a wonderful display of penstemon flowers in the first season, simply by planting a larger specimen in the spring.

This is because they are very forgiving, non-temperamental plants that establish quickly. Smaller specimens planted in autumn will flower well the following summer.

Penstemons can be susceptible to harsh frosts. They will tolerate slight frost, but it is a good idea to leave any old foliage on your plants over winter, as this helps to protect new growth that can appear at the base of the plant in mid-autumn. This can look untidy, but the protection the old foliage provides is well worth it. When all danger of frost is past, you simply remove the old frosted growth.

Even though penstemons don't need very fertile soil, it is a good idea to give established clumps a side dressing of good compost, such as fish compost or sheep manure, after removing the old foliage in spring.

There are quite a few varieties of penstemon that are readily available at your local garden centre. Some of these are:

alice hindley - a true beauty, producing tall stems of mauve flowers with a white throat; around 1.5m x 1.5m.

blackbird - as its name suggests, it has gorgeous dark-coloured flowers with extra dark tips to the buds; around 1.2m x 1.2m.

charles rudd - flowers are deep magenta/purple with a pure white throat; around 1m x 1m.

garnet - a very old variety with slender foliage. It is smothered in strong stems of slightly narrow garnet-red flowers over a very long period, and considered one of the most successful cultivars; around 90cm x 90cm.

heterophyllus true blue, blue of zurich - wonderful ground cover varieties with quite different foliage from other types. They require good drainage to really do well, and produce the most surreal blue flowers over a long period of time; around 30cm x 30cm.

hidcote pink - produces very pretty bright rose flowers that fade to carmine rose with a creamy white lower surface. The throat has strong cerise markings, almost as though someone had drawn them with a pencil; around 1m x 1m.

purple passion - forms a very robust clump with larger foliage. Striking deep purple flowers are produced on strong stems; around 1m x 1m.

white swan (sometimes called snowstorm) - this hybrid has beautiful, pure white flowers. Can be slightly more temperamental than others; around 75cm x 75cm.

Sometimes the flowers of a "named" penstemon aren't the same as the description on the label. A lot of different hybrids have been developed over the years and as pieces have been passed from gardener to gardener within different countries (including New Zealand), quite a bit of confusion has developed when it comes to the correct naming of the various cultivars.

A lot of cultivars look fairly similar too, which doesn't help. These days, nurseries are attempting to name penstemons as correctly as they can.

You can also buy a large flowered selection - Penstemon gloxinia - in punnets at local garden centres at certain times of the year and this is a wonderful way to buy them.

Propagating your own penstemons is a very satisfying experience. They grow extremely easily from cuttings which can be taken at almost any time. You can take cuttings from fresh new growth in spring, or from slightly woodier growth in summer/autumn.

It's a good idea to make sure the cuttings are around 10cm long if you are taking them from new growth, as they can be a bit floppy if they are any longer.

Take the cuttings on a slant just below a leaf node and gently scrape the outer tissue from the node, dipping each cutting in rooting hormone if you like, then put them in propagation sand.

Using propagation sand helps ensure the cuttings produce a lot of good strong roots. There aren't any nutrients in the sand so the cuttings are desperate to find some - hence they produce more roots. Incredibly the cuttings can produce roots in as little as one week, depending on the time of the year and the weather.

Penstemon clumps need lifting and dividing around every three to four years and this is best done just as they are putting on their new growth in spring. You can also do it in autumn if you live in a frost-free area.

Lift the entire clump out of the ground and gradually split it up. You can force it apart by placing two forks back to back and exerting some force or you can just use a spade to chop it up into sections if that is easier.

Discard any old or dead growth, which is normally in the centre of the plant and replant the healthy sections. It is possible to get quite a lot of plants from one established clump. Stems that have been on the ground will also often sprout roots and these can be replanted too.

The history of penstemons is long and involved. In brief, it was first scientifically recorded simply as Penstemon in 1748 by Dr John Mitchell and included several new types he had found in his native Virginia, USA.

Mitchell was one of the great 18th century scholars. Botany and zoology fascinated him, among other things, and he was an avid collector.

In 1745 ill health took him to England and on his recovery he played an important role in overseeing the construction of the original glasshouses in Kew Gardens. He was also involved in the organisation of Kew's plant collections in 1750.

In 1753, Carl Linnaeus, a renowned taxonomist, didn't agree that penstemon was a genus and he assigned it to the existing genus Chelone, calling it Chelone pentstemon from the Greek penta meaning five - due to the unusual fifth stamen that penstemon flowers have. Linnaeus' decision to rename the genus caused quite a lot of controversy over a period of time.

In 1769 Mitchell's work was reprinted still using the name Penstemon and ultimately this became the accepted official name, but not until the 20th century.

As expeditions travelled through the western United States and Mexico, the number of known species went from four to 63 and this increased to 163 by the year 1900.

The earliest known record of seed being offered for sale in Europe was 1813 and subsequently many hybrids were developed in Europe.

In the 20th century, field work was carried out in the great basin and this resulted in a total of 250 species of penstemons being found.

In 1946, the American Penstemon Society was formed to help promote botanical and horticultural interest in these plants. They are still very popular there today.

Europe has always been very active in the development of different penstemon cultivars. As early as 1861, the Royal Horticultural Society entered 78 different varieties to be trialled.

Penstemons have been popular in New Zealand for many years. It is not known exactly when they first arrived here but in 1912 Arthur Yates' nursery in Auckland had penstemons for sale and in 1916 there was a large ornamental display of them in the Wellington Botanic Garden - it is possible that these were raised from seed but it is more likely the original stock was imported from the United Kingdom.

Penstemons faded from view to a certain extent until after the World War 2 when some new cultivars were brought in.

They became more available when nurserymen offered top-performing seed strains such as "gloxinia flowered", which proved well suited to our New Zealand climate.

The Auckland Botanic Gardens has a good display of penstemons and the Dunedin Botanic Garden has a fairly extensive collection. In Oamaru, the local council uses them in their public plantings.

If you would like to know more about this lovely genus, a good book to refer to is The Gardener's Guide to Growing Penstemons by David Way and Peter James.

Next time you are at your local garden centre, ask about these wonderful plants. They are very beautiful, rewarding and easy to grow, making them a perfect introduction to perennials.