Hattie Braun is an Assistant in Extension and County Director for the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension Coconino County. As the Coconino Master Gardener Program Coordinator for the past 14 years, Hattie has the good fortune to work with and teach northern Arizona gardeners on a variety of topics including food-based gardening, ornamentals, native plant gardens, invasive species, landscaping, water conservation and urban forestry. She has worked with numerous garden education and beautification programs in Coconino County.
Hattie has a B.S. in Plant Ecology from Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA and a M.S. in Horticulture from Pennsylvania State University. She moved to northern Arizona in 1993, became a Coconino Master Gardener in 1995, and has mastered many, but certainly not all, of the gardening challenges of growing in a high elevation, cold, dry environment. She is looking forward to adding the blue-flowered Grand Mesa beardtongue (Penstemon mensarum) to her garden.
Fifty Shades of Blue. Why are so many Master Gardeners smitten with blue flowers? Is this because plants with blue flowers only make up 10% of all flowering plants, and truly blue flowers are rarer still? In this gardening talk filled with wisdom, humor, and fetching images of blue flowered ornamentals, Hattie Braun will shed some light on the birds and the bees that pollinate blue flowers, and the great lengths flowers go to attract them. You’ll get an eyeful of the shades of blue that plants use to entice pollinators and some tips on how to use blue shades to add sex appeal to your garden.
