All About Growing Echinacea

This Old House landscape contractor, Jenn Nawada explains how to identify echinaceas and gives a general overview of the perennial. Jenn also demonstrates how to take care of and maintain the plant.

Echinaceas are popular for a reason, and Jenn shares why they are a great plant for even the inexperienced gardener.

What is Echinacea?

Echinaceas are a full sun plant that can be grown in zones 3-8, which is almost everywhere in the continental United States.

Echinaceas are drought-tolerant, have long bloom times throughout the summer, attractive to pollinators, and have the ability to reseed themselves.

Also known as coneflower, echinacea is a very durable plant that is deer resistant and beloved by bees and butterflies. All of these attributes make it a very popular perennial for home landscapes.

While echinacea was traditionally available only in purple, growers have developed cultivars in many different colors, including beautiful yellows, reds, and oranges. The Sombrero series, for example, offers a striking deep orange-red bloom that adds a vibrant pop of color to the landscape starting in mid-June.

How to Maintain Echinaceas

1. Each plant has multiple blooms. Jenn recommends deadheading them around midsummer.
2. To deadhead, wait until the flower is fading out of bloom. Then, take bypass pruners and look at the spent flower. Follow down to where you see the fresh set of blooms, and make the cut right above that.
3. There’s no set time to divide the plant, just do it whenever it outgrows the space. To divide, carefully dig up around the plant with a shovel. Take the shovel and create a clean cut at the roots.
4. Plant to a new hole.

Pro Tip: When deadheading echinacea, give it a nice, clean cut as close to the base of the spent bloom as you can, then wait for your next bloom to happen. When dividing, try to keep the roots all intact as you make your cut — this helps the transplant establish more quickly in its new location.

Dividing Step-by-Step: When dividing echinacea, rake back any mulch covering the base of the stems, then set a spade or shovel 6 to 12 inches from the center of the plant and push it down vertically into the soil. Work the shovel this way around the plant until you’ve formed a circle, then slip the shovel blade under the root ball and pry it out of the ground.

Resources

Jenn discussed a variety of echinaceas, which can be found at The Home Depot and nurseries.

Expert assistance with this segment was provided by Stonegate Gardens.