Autumn garden. Aster x frikartii ‘Monch’ and Rudbeckia behind Stipa seed heads
© Mark Bolton. A New Cottage Garden: A practical guide to creating a picture-perfect cottage garden (Pimpernel Press, £22)
When the seasons change, a blast of bold colour in the garden lifts the scene, and the least subtle, the most joyous is yellow. Coneflowers (Rudbeckia) are one of the best perennials for providing it: in early autumn, under grey skies, their daisy flowers shine blazing shades of Canary and gold, pairing beautifully with the flax and fawn tones of ornamental grasses.
There are 24 species of Rudbeckia, all native to North America and mostly found in the United States. They hail from a range of habitats, including prairies, which is the reason for their surge in popularity. When prairie-style planting became fashionable, garden designers employed the long-flowering, informal beauty of the rudbeckia (and other naturalistic perennials) to create meadow-inspired borders.
In the past, Native Americans used the rudbeckias of the prairies – including Rudbeckia hirta (black-eyed Susan), R. laciniata (cut-leaved coneflower), and R. triloba (brown-eyed Susan) – as medicine. The roots and dried leaves were made into tea or poultice and employed to treat a variety of illnesses, including cold, flu, infection, inflammation, earache, and snake bite. Modern studies indicate that the plant does indeed strengthen the immune system and has anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and antimicrobial properties.
The plant was named by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, in honour of his mentor, Olof Rudbeck the Younger, a fellow botanist at Uppsala University, and his father, Olof Rudbeck the Elder, a naturalist and doctor. ‘I have chosen a noble plant in order to recall your merits and the services you have rendered,’ Linnaeus wrote in his dedication, ‘a tall one to give an idea of your stature, and I wanted it to be one which branched and which flowered and fruited freely, to show that you cultivated not only the sciences but also the humanities. Its rayed flowers will bear witness that you shone among savants like the sun among the stars.’
When rudbeckia flowers in early autumn, glowing loud shades of yellow, while much of the garden is browning, it does shine like the sun.
A wide border, like this 3-metre-wide one at Alasdair Cameron’s Devon garden, can be a spectacular way to experiment with planting. This one is filled with towering late-summer perennials and grasses in dusky, muted colours with dashes of orange from rudbeckias and heleniums. ‘I like to think of the river as an influence,’ says Alasdair. ‘The key structural plants are like river boulders, with everything else flowing and bouncing around them. I like to run particular plants through a space, then drop out into something else. It’s about rhythm and crescendo, and then bringing it down again.’
Eva NemethWhich rudbeckias to grow
Of the longer-lived perennial forms, the most impactful is Rudbeckia laciniata ‘Herbstsonne’. From August to October, it is a glorious explosion of colour at the back of the border, producing flowers with green hearts and reflexed lemon-yellow petals on stems that soar to 2 metres or more. R. laciniata ‘Starcadia Razzle Dazzle’ is similar, but slightly shorter.
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