The Gardens on Spring Creek

  Flashy August Fillers by Bryan Fischer, Curator and Horticulturist, Gardens on Spring Creek I keep a personal Instagram page. Largely, it features whatever flashy plant or plant community has recently caught my eye. Recently, I posted about Oenothera rhombipetala , or Sand Hills evening primrose, a Great Plains native that is widely underused and a great filler plant where an explosive pop of color is needed. Growing as a rosette in its first year, the plant erupts in July of its second season, sending a luminescent candelabra of four-petaled flowers skyward on tentacle-like stems. Despite the flashy photos and juiced verbiage, however, folks saw something else in my post that they seemed to care about a whole lot more: Penstemon richardsonii (Richardson’s penstemon). It’s always a penstemon!   I get it – any plant that will literally bloom itself to death is bound to catch one’s eye.   While the Oenothera does this as well, there is something special about Richardson’s penstemo