Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Echinaceas Everywhere You Look

A riot of color, that’s what you can have with Echinaceas. Purple, pink and white have self-sown and hybridized in my front hot garden. I think of the front garden as a "drive-by-look garden". So my plan has always been that it be colorful. Echinacea do add lots of color and this is their time to shine and indeed they do shine. Have you ever looked carefully at the Echinceca cone just as daylight is fading. Them seem to glow fluorescent. Yesterday we  reached 96 degrees. I went out about 6pm after the sun was losing some of its heat and took these pictures.


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Glowing along with the echinacea is a coreopsis. This plant was shared with me so I do not know its variety. The plant is taller and brighter than moonbeam It too is easy care in this drought tolerant garden.

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Years ago I planted White Swan. You can almost see the glow.
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Echinaceas are magnets for butterflies
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This morning I spent a couple of hours in the back garden which is cool and fresh. People are always surprized as they enter the 33 foot arbor (see sidebar) and come into this garden. Here I enjoy dead heading. Echinaceas are scattered throughout the garden.  
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While checking the tomatoes I found this nice spider, doing his job.

29 comments:

  1. Dear Gloria, I agree with you that Echinaceas are such colourful flowers and generally trouble free. An asset indeed to any garden and they seem to particularly thrive in the heat.

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  2. Gloria your coneflowers look wonderful. Mine are a little ratty by now if they survived the rabbits. The coreopsis looks like Zagreb but I can't get close enough to see the leaves. I had no idea you got so hot where you are.

    Eileen

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  3. Gloria, Your garden is beautiful. I love all the different colors of the echinacea. Take care and have a great day.

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  4. Dear Edith - Yes, the echinacea are as asset in a hot garden. Does the UK get extreme heat? I know you have moisture.

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  5. Hi Eileen - yes, we get hot. We get very cold, hot and dry. This is not particularly a gardening area. People grow vegetable plots but many do think of gardens. But where there is a will there is a way, we just need to find the right plants.

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  6. Garden of Threads - Thank you...I see in catalogs that there are all sorts of colors and double flowered echinaceas. I am behind in the times. You know, I didn't buy any perennials at all this year and now I am wanting something new.

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  7. This is a dream garden for me Gloria - it is so beautiful - I think this is the best I've ever seen your front garden. Echinaceas hate my garden - come to think of it I never see them in other folks gardens either around here - they seem to last about 1 winter if you're lucky and then completely disappear - a bit like coreopsis.

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  8. I love echinacea, but have never had much luck with it, so haven't tried growing it in this garden. As it's doing so well in your drought tolerant garden, I'm now wondering if perhaps I over watered it.

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  9. I have only grown the purple variety, but would love to grow the white and see what happens when they hybridize. Your front garden is so beautiful :-)

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  10. Your echinaceas are so clean and crisp looking in the hot summer light. Radiant! I especially love the photo where the pink coneflowers peek out from the hydrangea around the little pond.

    Mine are awful, floppy, bug eaten, with no petals. They have never self seeded and always look distressed in my garden. Wrong place for them? Wrong kind? I have to content myself with pictures like yours.

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  11. My first garden was in Rapid City, SD. I miss the Dakotas!! Your garden is so beautiful!! I love all the coneflowers and I'm sure the butterflies do, too!

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  12. I love the white swan. My purple coneflowers are doing well in their second summer, so maybe next year I'll try some white.

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  13. Rosie, LeavesBloom - We grow echinacea because we are so hot and dry, but you have wonderful flowers in Scotland. I enjoyed your Nature Trail post.

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  14. I know they are very useful in the garden, but I could have done without the spider pick. Now I'll be twitching the rest of the day;)

    My echinacea is very lazy, not one bloom yet. It seems to be one of those plants I tend to kill off...rather pathetic, isn't it?

    Christine in Alaska

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  15. Gloria, your cone flowers are to die for! I can honestly never get enough of your garden!!! Now, that spider makes me shiver. I posted one about 1 or 2 weeks ago...I think they're the same, or in the same family at least considering the "writing" in the web. I appreciate them, but from a distance!

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  16. Looking good, and the spiders love you I bet. I've seen more this year than in the last few, which makes me glad.

    I don't know what my summer garden would do with Echinaceas, Coreopsis, Rudbeckias and other summer plants, but I also get tired of deadheading. But, yes, that's gardening. Thanks for the reminder.~~Dee

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  17. Dear Gloria, Yes, indeed, the UK now seems to have periods of very hot, often humid, weather in the summer months. With some few exceptions, 1959 and 1976, this used not to be the case. However, the very high temperatures are unlikely to be sustained beyond a few days at a time.

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  18. Gloria, All those echinaceas look wonderful, and I love the various ways you have them combined with other flowers. It's possible that your bright yellow coreopsis is 'Golden Showers;' I think that might be an older and larger version than Zagreb. Coreopsis verticillata 'Golden Showers' is one of those plants that I bought a 4" pot of about 15 years ago and have been dividing and redividing ever since. I love it.

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  19. coneflowers are one of my favorites. So nice!!

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  20. CHi Clare, Curbstone Valley Farm, yes try less water. How is Frodo? I have been following the tale of Ginger and Frodo :)

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  21. Hi Noelle, thank you - I just bought a yellow and red.

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  22. Hi TS, Yes, soon I will show some of the butterflys pictures that I have been taking.

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  23. Hi Ginny, Yes, do try some of the white. They really do shine at dusk

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  24. Hi Christine, I don't mind the garden spiders. They are usually big enough to avoid. And, they eat mosquitoes!

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  25. Hi Kimberly, you are too kind. I dress covered from head to toe because of chigger, skeeters and to keep spiders off of me!

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  26. Hi Dee, It sounds like we grow lots of the same flowers. But, your area is much hotter! I'm glad you appreciate the spiders.

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  27. Dear Edith, thank you for the reply. I imagine the UK as lush and green.

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  28. Jean, yes, I think you are right! Thank you! I googled Golden Showers and it really looks like it!

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  29. Meensync - I really appreciate coneflowers. Some years I have pulled them out even after giving many away and they still come back.

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