Events + Tours

Penstemon at the Toronto Botanical Garden

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Enjoy this hastily scribbled note* on a quick visit to the Toronto Botanical Garden revealing Penstemons!

A ZimSculpt statue tucked into the courtyard, backed by pale Allium, Penstemon, and roses.

A peek at the entry garden in June got me hyperventilating about beardtongue (Penstemon). The garden was brimming with it! Oh my goodness, as my friend Margaret would say.

Perhaps it’s what I want to call Bergdorf-Goodman syndrome (easier to remember than Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon). It’s when you notice something for the first time, then suddenly you see it everywhere. On a trip to Denver, everything was coming up penstemons! They’re native to Colorado, and come in an array of colours and forms, all beloved by bees. Suddenly, I was seeing penstemons all over Toronto. Perhaps that’s not only because my eyes are open for it, but that it’s being used more often here.

Oh, the TBG entry garden! Wow.

Seeing them massed to this extent, I have a new appreciation of Penstemon ‘Husker Red’, which formerly I found pallid and lacking in impact. Mind. Changed.

*“Take this hastily scribbled note, hastily…” is a quote from the Beatles movie Help! which Sarah and I have seen at least, at least, 25 times. Mostly in our tween years. It’s a very sticky quote, at least in our impressionable minds. Our friends and family might have heard us repeat it, oh, I don’t know, a few times.

I guess that’s Beatles-Mindhop Phenomenon.

Helen

Helen Battersby is a gardener, a writer, a power-walker and a garden coach, not always in that order!

4 comments

  2. Loved learning about Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, I have a feeling I am going to now notice that effect more and more!
    Looking forward to more about the Zimsculpt;the sculpture that you photgraphed is very intriguing.

  4. Bergdorff-Goodman is easier to remember than Baader-Meinhoff, and less explosive as well. Smooth Penstemon is a wonderful perennial flower.

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