Columbine (Aquilegia)
The first columbines I grew came from seed collected outside the front door of the Steamboat Grand Hotel in Steamboat Springs, Colo., in 2003. I figured if the plants could put up with the dry, short Colorado summer, they might be worth something up here. I figured right. These plants have been showy and productive for several years now in the perennial bed. As I wrote before, it often pays to grow "outside the zone." In the case of columbines, a lot of the catalogues seem to put these guys in zone 3 or 4. Going by those standards, they shouldn't be able to survive a winter here. They do fine, even with air temperatures down to -40 degrees F for up to a month.
