Choose a sunny location with typical well-drained garden soil. If you want to add the Echinacea to your garden, you can plant them anytime from spring through autumn. This is a vigorous perennial that can remain undisturbed for years on end.

‘Fatal Attraction’ (pink with dark stems).‘Delicious Candy’ (pink double-flowering variety).The centre – the cone – is brownish-orange and remains standing on its stem until deep into the winter. Patient plant breeding efforts have yielded cone flowers in more and more colours such as white, green, yellow, orange, pink and just about every colour in between – colours pretty enough to eat! Echinacea varieties: It produces a large pink flower on a sturdy stem attaining a height from 60 to 100 centimetres. One of these species – Echinacea purpurea – is an ancestor of today’s lovely newcomers. The Echinacea has its roots in the North American prairie. No wonder, then, that such a colourful insect-attracting perennial has been a gardener’s favourite for centuries. Every Echinacea flower lasts for weeks, meanwhile attracting many bees, bumblebees and butterflies to the garden with its honey-like fragrance. It adds colour to borders and planters from July into September. This good old perennial has been gracing our borders and attracting bees and butterflies for ages. The Echinacea produces large flowers with somewhat pendulous petals radiating from a domed brownish-orange centre. Here’s more about this perennial that’s such a favourite in our gardens. These days, we could simply call them all cone flowers. Although the flowers of the original species are purplish-red, we now have many other colours to choose from. What many people don’t know, however, is that this name is somewhat misleading. The common name for the Echinacea is the Purple coneflower: a good description of its domed centre surrounded by purplish-red petals.

Dark purple coneflower