Stephanie’s Coneflowers

My name is Stephanie Stewart, and I live in Averill Park, New York.

Lately I’ve seen a lot about coneflowers (Echinacea species and hybrids, Zones 4–9) and I’m not surprised! They add color and texture and height to my gardens—and they are so easy to care for. Mine range in color from whites, to pinks, to neon orange and reds. Heights range from 8 inches to 36 inches.

I started buying coneflowers a few years ago after reading about them in Fine Gardening and have added a couple more each year.

Butterflies and bees love them, and so do I.

This looks to be ‘Cheyenne Spirit’, which boasts a great mix of colors on healthy, long-lived plants. And as you can see in this photo, the bees enjoy them as well.

That’s an incredibly rich, saturated pink on this coneflower.

The classic, original Echinacea purpurea is still a beautiful plant well worth growing despite all the new hybrids in other colors.

Hybrids between pink Echinacea purpurea and the yellow Echinacea paradoxa allowed for the development of all these new varieties with brilliant colors.

It’s beautiful to see how the look of the flower changes as the petals fully unfurl and open up.

Many new selections of coneflowers are shorter, but taller forms like this add great presence to the garden.

A perfect pink coneflower

Have photos to share? We’d love to see your garden, a particular collection of plants you love, or a wonderful garden you had the chance to visit!

To submit, send 5-10 photos to [email protected] along with some information about the plants in the pictures and where you took the photos. We’d love to hear where you are located, how long you’ve been gardening, successes you are proud of, failures you learned from, hopes for the future, favorite plants, or