Planting and Caring For Echinacea (coneflower)

Looking for a perennial that blooms in mid-summer, is good for cutting and attracts butterflies as well? You need Echinacea, aka coneflower. Never have gardeners had a better selection of this native perennial than now. You can not only plant the traditional purple coneflowers (which are really more pink than purple) but there are several new flower colors as well. Here are some tips for growing Echinacea and photos that show where to clip off flowers that are going by.

• Plant Echinacea in full sun. Choose a spot that gets at least five hours of dead-on sunlight including the noon hour.
• Coneflowers like good drainage. Plant them in organically amended sandy soil, or good garden loam in a location that doesn’t get flooded. These perennials don’t like to have “wet feet” in the winter.
• These perennials can be strengthened the first year of planting by deadheading them in late-August and not allowing them to come into flower later in the fall. Enjoy your newly planted Echinacea flowers all summer and then clip off all flowers at the end of August. If the plant starts to form new buds in September clip these off before they open. Leave the plant in place all fall – don’t cut it down in your fall cleanup. Given this treatment the first season your plants will build a strong root system that will promote hardy, robust growth for years to come. After the first year you can allow the plant to flower in the fall.
• In general, keep Echinacea on a lean diet – fertilize once in the spring with an organic fertilizer.
• When the first flowers start to fade in late-July or early August start clipping off the older flowers just above the foliage further down the stem. See the photo below. This will stimulate new blooms. An alternative to clipping off individual stems as the flowers fade is to cut the entire plant back by about half. This is faster but the plant will look “hacked” for a period before it recovers.