Echinacea: how to grow & choose the best

Echinaceas are real dazzlers in the late-summer border: sturdy daisies standing erect with flowers that resemble sets of spinning saucers. The colourful sun-ray petals surround bronzed, almost metallic cones. These prickly centres also give echinacea its name, for Ekhînos is Greek for hedgehog.

They’re insect-friendly, too, each central disc containing between 200 and 300 florets with a nectar pot at its base, which makes the flowers ideal for butterflies and bees. It doesn’t end there though: the buds resemble intricate coronets and, after the flowers have faded, the dark central cone persists into winter and forms a dramatic silhouette. This ability to fade gracefully into winter has made echinaceas essential for those wishing to emulate Piet Oudolf’s prairie planting style and it’s the seed-raised echinaceas that do this best.

There are nine echinacea species and four subspecies distributed across the eastern and mid-western states of America. They’re found naturally on prairies, and the area of greatest species richness is in the grasslands of Oklahoma and Missouri. Both get hot, humid summers and long, cool winters but hardiness isn’t generally a problem, because they are often protected by snow cover. The wet, stop-start winters in the UK, however, don’t suit them as well.

The most commonly grown garden type, known as the purple coneflower or Echinacea purpurea, has fibrous roots and will flag in dry conditions. In the wild it’s often found on wetter soils adjacent to rivers and streams. Echinacea purpurea arrived here in 1699 when the English clergyman-naturalist John Banister (1654–1692) sent seeds to Jacob Bobart the Younger, Keeper of the Oxford Botanic Garden, from Virginia. The roots were already being used as a