The Echinacea garden is coming along. It’s been a long process. The area is at the very back of my yard and was totally covered with honeysuckle trees that I cut down during the summer. Slowly, I’ve been filling it in with new plants.
Even though they are written down somewhere, I can’t tell you the names of all these varieties. But in the end, that isn’t what is important to me. What does matter, is that they are all beauties with deep vibrant colors.
I’ve been slowly adding to the collection over the summer, and especially now that it is fall, most of the nurseries all have them half off. It’s been hard to resist continued buying with these good prices.
I have some of the common pink variety that somehow reseeded itself back here from the front yard. These plants have just come into bloom this week.
I’m leaving a lot of the seed heads on, hoping the gold finches who love the seeds, will help scatter them around and create new volunteer plants in the spring.
I did finally discover what was causing the echinacea and rudbeckia flower heads to snap and dangle. A very informed employee at my local garden center knew immediately what I was talking about. So if your echinacea, rudbeckia, and/or sunflowers are looking like this next photo, the culprit is most likely the Sunflower Headclipping Weevil. The treatment was to order and apply Nematodes to my entire flower areas. Hopefully those micro nematodes will go to work in the ground and settle this decimation of my echinacea plants.
I have probably 20 – 30 new plants back here and the area is slowly starting to fill in. Beginning gardens are always very sparse. First full year gardens are starting to give you a glimpse of what they can be. And second year gardens are coming into their own. I have high hopes that within a few years, this area will be solid echinacea and a riot of color.
As you can see, I still haven’t stained the fence black yet. I ran out of time this year, so that is on the spring agenda.
Such pretty varieties, Cindy! I can imagine a gorgeous, full display in a couple of years.
I can hardly wait for the garden to mature. What a treat it will be to have such a riot of color that will bloom right up into October. I just decided to also plant this area up with daffodils, so I don’t have to wait so long to have color back there. The daffs will have died down and disappeared by the time the echinacea strut their stuff.
This is a beautiful area of your garden, Cindy! I can’t grow echinaceas (they don’t seem to like either our clay soil or winter wet) so it is lovely to appreciate yours.
It is hard to believe your ground wouldn’t grow echinacea as beautifully as it grows everything else. I’ve always thought of echinacea as a native American plant that would grow anywhere, but I’ve read they actually need/like rich soil. But it is one of those flowers that you see here at homes that I would not consider gardeners. The pink variety seems to be the most hardy and is seen everywhere. I’m hoping for a riot of color next summer.