Coneflowers Are Full of Surprises
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Every August our perennial yard turns into a living bouquet, and this year, one variety is stopping people in their tracks.
Meet Fringe Festival. It's a coneflower...but it doesn't have a cone. Instead you get a double-petaled pom pom of a flower in strawberry red, very unlike like its neighbors. We've got it in stock now, and it's one that everyone's been asking about.
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We've seen a lot of different kinds of coneflowers over the years. They're our best selling perennial, with a flair for the dramatic in more ways than one. For instance, sometimes they don't stay the color you planted.
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The Mystery of the Color-Changing Coneflower
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If you've ever planted a specific color of coneflower and seen it change color over the years, you're not imagining things! Here's what's going on:
Some coneflower (a.k.a. echinacea), are grown from seed. Others are clones, propagated from pieces of a single parent plant, making all of them genetically identical.
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Seed-grown echinacea tends to be bigger and hardier than its cloned cousins, and it will often self-sow, starting new plants in your garden. The pinkish-purple native coneflower has very strong genetics, so it tends to come out on top, although some strains, like Cheyenne Spirit, are bred to express many different shades. Rather than your original plant changing colors, you might just have more plants than you started with.
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You can keep your plants sticking to the status quo by deadheading them before they go to seed, but if you enjoy surprises, it can be a fun way to fill a flower bed.
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These are all the Cheyenne Spirit variety of coneflower, and that's only a fraction of the colors they come in!
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There's also a phenomenon called "genetic co-dominance," which is more likely to affect the cloned varieties. In this case, stress or injury to the plant can stimulate it to repair itself using the strongest genetic blueprint available...which again, tends to give you the classic pinky purple echinacea, often showing up as different-colored flowers on the same plant!
Seed-grown echinacea is grouped on its own table in the yard, so if the "grow your own surprises" route appeals to you, you'll know exactly where to look. As for Fringe Festival, just take a walk out into the perennial yard. You can't miss it.
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Butterfly Bush Done Right
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The sterile Miss Molly (pictured above), Miss Violet, and Miss Ruby Butterfly Bush are staff favorites, with a home in many of our own gardens.
Butterfly Bush is amazingly generous, blooming from midsummer until frost and feeding everything from swallowtails to hummingbird moths. It's one of the most reliable nectar sources you can plant, helping support the many generalist pollinators that visit our gardens while taking the pressure off the native plants that more specialized pollinators depend on.
Here in Central Illinois, Butterfly Bush presents a different set of challenges than it does in warmer parts of the country. Rather than spreading aggressively, many varieties struggle to survive our winters.
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That's why we've chosen cultivars like the 'Pugster' and 'Miss' series. These newer introductions have been bred with two important improvements: they're sterile, so they won't produce viable seed, and they're better equipped to handle cold winters.
If you're planting a Butterfly Bush, (or any shrub, tree or perennial from midsummer onward), we also recommend Fertilome Root Stimulator, which you can pick up in our Plant Pharmacy. It provides the plant with an extra shot of energy to put down roots.
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The most vibrant pollinator gardens combine native plants with long-blooming nectar sources that keep pollinators fed throughout the season. If you're looking to spread a big buffet, Butterfly Bush is one of your best bets.
Happy gardening!
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Find Your New Favorite Houseplant
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Is Lithrops, a.k.a. Living Stones, the weirdest plant ever? Maybe! It's also one of the fastest selling things in Container Cove right now, so if you spot one, it might not last the week.
Our houseplant selection changes constantly, and right now we have a varied section, from easy care staples to the genuinely strange. There's something worth a look every time you stop in. Check out our current list of in-stock houseplants, but remember—it's never the same twice!
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