It’s easy to grow your own flowers from seed. Here’s beautiful flowers, growing information & seed collections for gifts.
COUNTRY GARDEN SEED SHOP
Echinacea purpurea 'Bravado'
Echinacea Bravado is a vigorous plant with long strong stems and plenty of beautiful purple-pink daisy flowers each with a striking orange centre. Often called Coneflowers because of this central disk, Echinacea Bravado produces flowers all summer and autumn attracting beneficial insects to your garden. Flowers are striking in garden borders where their colour and form provide contrast to the more usual mounds and spires of summer flowers. Excellent for wildlife. Attracts Bees, Butterflies and Ladybirds. Excellent Cut Flower.
Echinacea are brilliant plants to grow because they are super productive giving you an excellent show in the garden and masses of flowers for picking. What's more they are perennial. Cut the stems and foliage back after flowering (either in late autumn or spring), give them a good mulch of organic matter and they'll regrow to flower again next year.
| Genus | Echinacea purpurea |
| Variety | Bravado |
| Plant Type | Hardy Perennial. Cut Flower. |
| Height & Spread | 60-90cm tall x 60 cm wide (2 feet tall x 2 feet) |
| Sow Seeds | Needs cold treatment first then sow on the surface of compost indoors in August/September or March. Cover with a fine layer of vermiculite. Echinacea needs light to germinate. At 18°C Echinacea will germinate in 14-21 days. Allow seedlings to grow until well established then pot on into 9cm pots and grow on until it's warm outdoors. |
| Plant Out | Plant out after the last frosts from May onwards. Once plants are established they are hardy all year round to minus 10°C to minus 15°C. |
| Conditions Required | Echinacea prefers free daining soil and a sunny spot. Water thoroughly in long dry spells. |
| Flower Production | Masses of blooms produced from July to September/October. Echinacea Bravado often flowers in the first year just four months after sowing the seeds. Deadhead and feed regularly to keep the flowers going. |
| Picking | For cut flowers pick regularly to encourage repeat flowering. It's best to pick early in the morning or in the cool evening and stand them in deep water for a few hours before arranging. Long lasting cut flower (lasts up to 14 days). |
| Planting Combinations | Echinacea are some of the best perennial flowers that you can grow. They make a great show on their own and with other summer flowering perennials such as Achillea millefolium, Agastache 'Astello Indigo', Foeniculum vulgare 'Purpurea' and Gaura lindheimeri. |