The Well-Tended Perennial Garden The Essential Guide to Planting and Pruning Techniques, Third Edition

Echinacea purpurea

purple coneflower

compoSitae

Mauve-pink daisylike flowers with an

orange cone center; coarse green leaves

2–4 ft. high; 2 ft. wide

Full sun

Blooms July–September

Zones 3–8

pruning Plants seem to have a long

bloom period even without deadhead-

ing, although deadheading makes the

new flowers more prominent and

keeps the plants looking fresh. I

deadhead early in the bloom season

and then curtail it in September,

removing only the blackest heads and

allowing the other seedheads to

remain for the goldfinches that will

feed heavily on the seedheads during

September and October. Leaving the

seedheads up for the winter provides

food for many birds, including the

juncos. But beware, leaving the

seedheads also means excessive (an

understatement) seedlings to contend

with in the spring. They appear to have

a 100 percent germination rate. I have

started to compromise (since I’m

running out of friends and family to

whom I haven’t already given flats of

echinacea), leaving only small

numbers of seedheads for the winter. I

enjoy the birds too much to remove

them all, and the heads are so interest-

ing when covered with snow. I know

some gardeners who find the dead-

heads unattractive and opt to remove

them for that reason.

Echinacea responds well to pruning

before flowering as a means to delay

bloom, providing fresh coneflowers

into late September, even early

October, for extended interest in the

garden as well as for cut flowers at a

time when unpruned plants are mostly

faded and full of seedheads. Part of a

drift of coneflowers can be treated this

way, or coneflowers in different parts

of the garden can be pruned for

different peak flowering times. Two

interesting approaches to pruning are

described. Plants can be cut by half in

early June or when they are about 2 1/2

ft. tall. They will start to flower 2–3

weeks later than usual (mid- to late

July), depending on the weather, and

will bloom for 2–3 weeks longer than

unpruned plants, going strong until

late September. They may mature at

about 1 ft. shorter than unpruned

plants.

Another effective method to delay

flowering is to cut off about 1 ft. of the

Echinacea purpurea ‘Bright Star’.
The shorter plants in front were
pruned in early July and the
taller plants in back were left
unpruned. This effectively layers
the planting and delays
flowering on the pruned plants,
providing flowers later in the
season.