Echinacea Mellow Yellow

Enjoy a changing succession of blooms from cream to deep yellow and every colour in between. The large cone changes from green to gold and finally chocolate. You can enjoy around four months of flowers, and the plant keeps on giving with viable seed that flowers in its first year.

Echinacea are amazing perennials, they look great in cottage gardens, naturalistic plantings or any garden bed.

Echinacea flowers are excellent for cutting as they last well in a vase, and can be dried. While the flower season is already quite impressive, cutting blooms and/or deadheading will help to promote more flowers and extend the bloom season. Alternatively you can cut it back to half after the first bloom, add some fertiliser and enjoy a second, shorter season into autumn.

If you allow the flower heads of Echinacea to stay on, the seed cones will remain decorative right to the end, extending the show through to winter. The birds really enjoy the seed head too!

Echinacea grow best in full sun. They prosper in any moderately fertile to humus rich, well drained soil. Water to establish, then only if rainfall is low, they become dry tolerant as they establish. The seeds are viable and can be left to fall or collected for sowing and you should have flowers in the first year.