Echinacea Harvest Moon

Bold Gold for the Sunny Garden

A new look for Echinacea, this plant is the result of 10 years’ work.

Plant Patent #17,652. Cultivar name: ‘Matthew Saul’.

Seems like every time we turn around, someone’s come up with a new Coneflower! (We can’t call them “Purple” Coneflowers anymore, because they’re all different colors these days!) Harvest Moon is one of the very finest, not only for its beautiful, extra-long-lasting fragrant flowers, but because of the terrific breeding that went into it. It’s the product of one of America’s finest plantsmen, and it shows with every plant.

These blooms are 4 inches wide, filled with rich, bright yellow color, and boasting a bold central brown cone. They won’t fade or wilt, even in the worst summer heat, and if you cut them for the vase, they’ll go strong for 2 weeks or so! (How many cutflowers can we say THAT about?) But I love them in the garden, because they add so much warmth and cheer to any sunny spot.

The flowers look even larger than they really are because the plant itself is quite compact — just about 2 feet high and wide, and very well-branched. By its second year, this plant will be putting out nearly 3 dozen blooms at once — practically a flower machine that doesn’t quit all summer.

Hardy from one end of the country to the other, happy in any sunny soil, and indifferent to harsh weather from drought to humidity to cold, Coneflower is a “must have” for the perennial border. It reaches 2 feet tall and wide and requires absolutely no care beyond good watering the first year to get it established in your garden. Remember, this is the native plant that bloomed in the tough, unbroken soil of the midwest and far west — it is ready to put up with just about anything your yard throws its way.

And if you love butterflies, Harvest Moon is like a beacon signaling them into your garden. They will come, they will pose, and when summer is over and the petals drop from the last flush of blooms, they will be replaced by songbirds, who come to eat the seeds from the big cone at the center of the blooms.

Space the plants about 18 inches apart and plan for summer-long blooms and butterflies. Zones 3-9.