Top Ten Echinaceas

With their big, bold daisy flowers in a range of colours, echinaceas are ideal hardy perennials for meadows, beds, borders and cutting

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ECHINACEAS are robust hardy perennials, much admired for their big, bold daisy flowers, they were introduced to Britain from North America in the 1790s but it took them a long time to catch on. These tightly clumping plants, with their stems each topped by a 4-5in (10-12cm) flower that faces the sky, soon became one of the favourite flowers with garden butterflies and other pollinators, but for the gardener, the flowers of the first varieties came in rather watery colours.

The first step forward 

The first developments were in improved flower colours that appealed to gardeners, pollinators and to cut-flower enthusiasts. The flowers were in the traditional daisy shape, but varieties with the ring of ray petals in a clearer and richer purple were selected, as well as white-flowered varieties whose petals really were a good clean white. Next came more single-flowered varieties, still with flowers like big daisies, but with yellow and orange or scarlet petals.

Modern echinaceas

In recent years the range of echinaceas has expanded rapidly with the introduction of varieties with bicoloured flowers. Crowned flowers, sometimes referred to simply as ‘double’, with a mass of short colourful petals in the centre instead of honey-coloured cones, have also brought a wider variety of colour and shape combinations. All these features now come on shorter, longer flowering plants that are less likely to fall over.

6 traditional echinaceas

Cheyenne Spirit