Colorful Coneflower (echinacea) Comments

Update July 2008: Best performer is echinacea 'Ruby Star' with great blooms and a long bloom season. Only one 'Harvest Moon' survived the drought and winter. Echinacea 'Sundown' survived and looked fine for a long bloom season. 'Sunset' did not survive.


When I decided to “garden outside the fence” this year, I was challenged to plan a garden that would be colorful while being deer-resistant and drought-tolerant. I was skeptical about using coneflowers (echinacea) as some consider those to be deer food. However, I found an equal number of sources that put these on the deer-resistant list. Since I love research and experimentation, I decided to test the new coneflowers for myself for both color and deer-resistance.

Whatever the color, butterflies, bees and birds all love coneflowers. I found a few nips of early buds by either deer or rabbits, but the damage has been so minimal that I’m glad I planted lots of coneflowers. At this point, if the critters want to come out and help me deadhead in the 90-100 degree weather, I would welcome their assistance! I try to leave the last fall blooms on the stalks to help feed the birds in winter. The coneflowers are planted in the company of known deer-resistant perennials/shrubs/grasses/herbs such as: agastache, verbena, coreopsis, salvia, fennel, miscanthus, vitex, clumping bamboo and crocosmia. It may be that the scent of these other plantings reduced the damage to the coneflowers. This morning, I noticed deer tracks throughout the garden, but they did not touch the coneflowers.

As for care, these coneflowers receive minimal watering from me. I deadhead as needed to promote more blooms. All of the varieties have produced bushy plants with lots of blooms, especially considering that this is the first season in my garden.

Please see the slideshow at the bottom of my blog for photos of the coneflowers.

Orange echinacea (2 patented varieties)

I was really impressed with the color when the orange coneflower varieties first bloomed. The colors will remind you of a gorgeous sunset or sundown. However, the more I left the flowers on the stems, the more faded they looked and the more they resembled purple coneflowers. But, the orange hues lasted long enough that I felt satisfied with the color combinations. These look wonderful with blue agastache or purple verbena. Whereas, I’ve found purple coneflowers to handle extra moisture just fine, these orange varieties got a bit of powdery mildew if they were in the high-moisture areas of my garden.

Yellow echinacea (1 patented variety)

I love the new soft yellow coneflowers for the color, the bloom size and the shape. The color is like a moon at harvest. The blooms are stunning and hold color very well. However, they really don’t like extra water. At one point, we received a lot of rain and all of the yellows planted where the soil drains really well, turned black, so I’ve cut them back to the ground. I think I’ll have to put these in the ‘plant like lavender’ care section of the garden. I had planted them with daylilies (inside the cottage fence)and while the colors were great, the moisture needs are too different. In the outer deer-resistant garden, I planted these with yellow coreopsis and snapdragons in front of blue buddleia.

Ruby echinacea

Echinacea purpurea 'Ruby Star (Rubinstern)' are my favorites! They perform well in moist soil or up on the slope in the drier areas. The color is true throughout the bloom season. The colors are so vibrant and the blooms are huge. These look so great with spirea ‘neon flash’ or agastache ‘red fortune’ of the same color blooms. I also have some coreopsis colors in my garden that would look great at the feet of these tall perennials. Rose thyme would be another magenta color combo. Or combine the rubies with blue-purple perennials like heliotropium amplexicaule or eupatorium coelestinum. The rubies are magenta enough to look fine with yellow. I don’t think I’d put these with orange unless the orange matches the color of the huge cones.

Please comment on your experiences with colorful coneflowers!

Happy Gardening!
Cameron

Butterfly Garden: Monarch Butterfly Update

News: Just got our garden certified as a Monarch Waystation by Monarch Watch! Learn more by visiting their website http://www.monarchwatch.org/waystations/

This is a quick update on the Monarchs. We now have 9 more Monarch cats (caterpillars) in our garden. This time they are on the swamp milkweed (asclepias incarnata), even though it isn’t blooming. The asclepias tuberosa was shown in previous reports on Monarch cats in the garden. I never thought that cats were cute until now! :-)

All of our milkweed was planted this spring, so we are thrilled with the response from the Monarchs. It was difficult to find milkweed for sale in my area as it is very late to emerge from the ground. If you plant it, make sure you mark the spot this fall so you won't accidentally dig it up next spring.

I have found it very difficult to photograph a Monarch butterfly. Seldom do they sit on a plant with their wings open. They flit about a lot more than the swallowtails, so I find myself chasing them around with my camera! I managed to snap one photo (after lots of blurry attempts) of one sitting on the blue agastache in the butterfly garden. The buddleia varieties and the lantana continue to be big favorites for all of the butterflies.

I’m still watching the bronze fennel to see if we’ll have Swallowtail cats!

Happy butterfly gardening!

Please see the new slideshow feature at the bottom of the page...

Combinations of Color in My North Carolina Garden

We’re always looking for inspiration for great color combinations in the garden. The color palette should reflect the personal taste of the gardener. To me, one of the biggest challenges with color combinations is finding perennials that bloom at the same time. I believe this is why annuals are so popular – they bloom together all summer long. If I can’t have blooms, I try to bring in color with foliage plants. In a new garden like ours, we have allowed spacing between the perennials to allow for future growth. As such, it can be difficult to get the full effect (especially in photos) of a color combination for a few years.

I’ve seen gardens of others with jaw-dropping color combinations that I can only dream to replicate! Here, growing in my North Carolina garden, these are my favorites for 2007.

In the spring, our lavender and dianthus (cottage pinks) bloomed at the same time. The purple lavender and pale pink blooms lasted for weeks and weeks. The spicy fragrance of the dianthus permeates the garden when grown en masse. The lavender blooms and foliage provides a soothing fragrance. So, I consider this duo to be my #1 color (and fragrance) combination for our spring garden. When these two are not in bloom, the foliage is still beautiful. I shear both with the hedge trimmer after the blooming is finished and within a week or so of new growth, they look lush. These two also stand up well in our hot summers, yet the blue-grey foliage provides a cool look in the garden. I like purple-red foliage next to these, such as a purple heuchera (coral bells). Lamb’s ear is a fuzzy silver foliage plant that also looks great with these two. Actually, it’s hard to find a color that doesn’t go well with the foliage. I give the dianthus a little more water than the lavender, but otherwise, I consider them to be easy-keepers. We have found the dianthus to be uprooted by either deer or bunnies when it’s located outside our cottage garden fence.


For big impact, think big plants. This is the first season that I’ve tried elephant ears. I selected colocasia esculenta fontanesii to plant on the sunny side of a magnolia virginiana (sweet bay magnolia). The big ears work so well with the magnolia, but I wanted some color. The mauve veins and hue of the stalks in the ears seemed to be the color to bring out. I planted buddleia ‘pink delight’ and a monarda (bee balm) of the same mauve color. In the shade of the ears, I planted heuchera with burgundy and amber foliage. This is my #2 choice of favorite combinations. We have drip irrigation around these plants. Other than deadheading the bee balm and butterfly bush, there is little maintenance. I fertilize the elephant ears whenever I fertilize the brugmansias and cannas in the garden.


For combining colorful foliage with colorful blooms, I have a tie for my #3 favorite, but one is in the blue family and one is in the red family. A Moench aster combined with purple sage is just glorious. I have to go look at this combination at least twice a day! Purple hypericum (a shrubby St. Johns Wort) growing alongside coreopsis ‘Heaven’s Gate’ is the tie for stunning colorful foliage and blooming perennials. The hypericum has some small yellow blooms, but mostly it’s a foliage plant that looks the same all season. The asters start blooming in July and bloom until frost. The coreopsis started blooming in June and with shearing, will repeat until frost.

I’d love to hear comments about the favorite color combinations in your garden!

Happy Gardening!