This beautiful perennial makes a superb garden plant. Collect the seeds when ripe and sow in sandy well-drained soil in the fall. When the plants are sufficiently large to handle, transplant them to a sunny stony bed in the garden. You can naturalize this delightful species by broadcasting its seeds onto suitable sites, such as road sides and gravelly slopes. Once established, showy Jacob's ladder spreads on its own by seed.
Smaller plants transplant easily especially late in the season.
Native peoples of the southern interior prepared species of Jacob's ladder to make a head and hair wash. European Jacob's ladders were grown in gardens for centuries because they were considered to have a wide range of medicinal values. It helped with trembling, palpitations of the heart, vapours, nervous complaints and headaches. The technical term Polemonium derives from the Greek polemonion, a name used originally for a medicinal plant associated with the philosopher Polemos of Cappadocia. All rights reserved.