After all, Colorado is filled with pockets of microclimates that allow plants to specialize, adapting so perfectly to defined conditions that they won t grow well anywhere else. Except in a rock garden. Flush with bloom in the early spring, the flowers may not be showy specimens like a hybrid tea rose or peony. That s one characteristic of species plants. They come from nature as nature intended.
Rock gardens are the laboratories of the world s high places.
That s what makes them so valuable. These are the gardens where new plants are introduced. Since 1980, when Panayoti first began at the Denver Botanic Gardens, he remembers only two penstemon species available at one regional commercial nursery. Although penstemons make up the largest genus of American native wildflowers, it s only recently that they ve found themselves as popular in the garden as they are in the wilderness. Now you could find a hundred.