Growing Echinacea Purpurea - the Coneflower

How to Grow This Summer-Flowering Perennial for the Border

Aug 14, 2009

Herbal treatment or border beauty? It's hard to resist the beautiful coneflowers produced by echinacea. Here's how to raise it from seed and keep it in tip-top condition.

Some say it’s a cure for the common cold, others say you’re better off eating your five-a-day. But it seems everyone agrees that echinacea is a cracking plant for the garden.

Echinacea purpurea

Confusingly, it shares its common name of coneflower with rudbeckia, because both genera contain many species that produce flowers with prominent, dome-shaped disk florets. But Echinacea purpurea deserves its moniker more than rudbeckia, simply because of its staggering beauty.

‘White Swan’ is one of the best varieties. At around 2ft. (60cm) tall, it’s as much at home in the middle of the herbaceous border as it is in a largish ornamental pot on the patio, where it’ll be a little shorter. But wherever it's placed, it won’t need support as those long flower stems are stiff enough to stand up to the worst that the weather can throw at them, even when plants are in full flower.

Its flowers are very long lasting, consisting of a skirt of pure white, downswept petals surrounding a greeny yellow dome. They’re also richly scented with honey – it’ll waft around the garden on hot, sunny days.

The plants can be left to flower unhindered for the entire summer, although the fading heads should be removed as soon as they go over to keep the display coming. Or a few blooms could be cut and added to a vase, where they’ll last for at least a couple of weeks, maybe longer if you change the water regularly.

Echinaceas aren’t massively fussy about where they put down roots, although it helps if the soil is reasonably fertile – a good helping of home made compost and well rotted manure during the winter prior to planting out will boost the flower count. They also need a sunny aspect, although they will put up with a semi-shaded position.

Fulfill all these criteria and the only worry then is what to plant with them. How about a backdrop of taller monardas and a front edging of carpanthea? Or simply pack the border with more of the same, namely pink and white Echinacea ‘Lustre Hybrids’ from Chiltern Seeds, rich red ‘Magnus’ from Thompson and Morgan or the truly exceptional ‘Pink Parasol’ from Wyevale, with candyfloss-pink petals and orange-pink domes.

Growing Echinacea From Seed

Echinaceas are largely pest- and disease-free and will flower reliably from one year to the next. Best of all, they're easily raised from seed and are widely sold by nurseries.

The copyright of the article Growing Echinacea Purpurea - the Coneflower in Perennial Plants is owned by Robert Keenan. Permission to republish Growing Echinacea Purpurea - the Coneflower in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.