A Rustic Garden Recipe For Continuous Color In Your Backyard All Season Long

Growing perennial flowers sometimes means making sacrifices. Maybe those German irises only bloom for a week, but what a week! Gardeners who love dramatic but short-lived blooms make room for these showstoppers. But fortunately, there are many flowers that deliver long-lasting blooms for weeks on end. Some perennial flowers are useful in the garden for their long flowering period, and you should plant them for a colorful autumn. If you enjoy a rustic, cottage look, you can't go wrong with these three autumn-hued powerhouse perennials: 'Arizona Apricot' blanket flower (Gaillardia 'Arizona Apricot'), 'Sunny Days Lemon' coneflower (Echinacea 'Sunny Days Lemon'), and 'Big Bang Mercury Rising' tickseed (Coreopsis 'Big Bang Mercury Rising').

These three flowers are loved by gardeners who've had success with them blooming from summer through the end of the autumn growing season. They are also easy to grow, increase rapidly for division, and attract pollinators and birds.They continue forming buds when deadheaded throughout the season. You can try other varieties of blanket flower, coneflower, and tickseed, but these newer cultivars are proven performers in the garden, so why not give them a try?

All three of these varieties thrive best in full sun. Plant them throughout your flower bed for sizzling color through summer into fall. The autumnal tones of yellow, orange, and burgundy red look great planted alongside blue or purple summer flowers. Try them with other sun-loving, late-blooming summer flowers in your garden like asters, mums, phlox, and sedums. Or try adding some of these for a rich warm-cool array of color: 'Debutante' chrysanthemum, 'Thunderhead' sedum, 'Wood's Blue' aster, 'Purple Dome' New England aster, or 'Amethyst' tall phlox.

The 'Arizona Apricot' blanket flower is compact, cold hardy (USDA zones 3 through 9) , and needs full sun to really thrive. Like other gaillardia, prefers a well-drained, sandy soil with a bit of organic matter like compost added at planting. The two-toned daisy-like yellow-orange flowers really light up the flower bed in summer and fall. The blossoms just keep coming, so keep an eye on it and gently deadhead the spent flowers to keep it blooming all season long.

Coneflowers are a wonderful late-summer bloomer, and the 'Sunny Days Lemon' coneflower is one of the more beautiful double-petaled varieties that grows in zones 4 through 9. The vivid yellow powder puff tops and downward-facing petals make this a very striking cultivar. Though these varieties don't produce as many seeds as other beautiful plants in your yard that songbirds love, they do attract plenty of insect pollinators like bees and butterflies. These long-blooming flowers are heat tolerant, love sun, and can add winter interest to the garden.

Coreopsis is a wonderful delicate-looking but tough perennial that lends weeks of color. 'Big Bang Mercury Rising' tickseed has bold burgundy petals with gold-yellow centers, a perfect color combination for the summer-into-autumn transition and beyond. The 'Big Bang' coreopsis series are hardy, newer hybrids that are long-blooming and is hardy in USDA zones 5 through 9. To survive wet winters, be sure that the site you choose has well-draining soil: adding compost and a bit of sand can help soil drainage.