Orange appeal
Heleniums are great for a splash of vibrant summer colour, writes David Overend.
Some like it hot while others wouldn’t give you two pence for an orange flower or shrub in their garden. Thankfully, normally we get to choose the plants we grow, and there are a lot of different plants to go around. But perhaps not that many orange ones...
Peruvian lilies (Alstromeria) spring to mind, as do certain poppies, Montbretia, of course, and marigolds (naturally).
There’s also the wonderful canna lily which, in a long, hot summer will thrive; even during a normal, damp and dismal summer, a canna can still put on a stunning show. And this is a plant which is supposedly fussy about its surroundings.
Some gardeners actually tolerate what many consider a weed – Pilosella aurantiaca (aka fox and cubs) a perennial member of the daisy family.
But for real heat, a blazing, vibrancy, it has to be heleniums, now, thankfully, regaining some of the popularity they had decades ago.
It came to the fore in Edwardian times when its predecessors were much in vogue as stars of the late-summer border.
Bees love it, using the flower’s domed centres as landing pads from which to scour for nectar. Grow heleniums alongside echinacea and rudbeckia and your garden will be abuzz all summer and well into autumn.
Numerous new varieties from the Continent have helped to revive interest in these sun-lovers, and H ‘Waldtraut’, with its intense orangeness, is more than likely to become the favourite of a new generation of gardeners.
At 120cm (4ft) high, it fits in remarkably well at the middle or back of the border, and when packed together, doesn’t need staking.
It looks fantastic planted in bold drifts, although don’t expect instant success because plants usually take a year or two to acclimatise to their home.
To keep them under control, cut them back to about 30cm (1ft) tall in May. This not only reduces their final height but will also delay flowering by a week or two. To propagate, divide established clumps every two or three years in spring. Dividing in autumn isn’t such a good idea as the small plants produced tend to die during the winter. Heleniums look a bit like small sunflowers, and in some parts of the world they are actually known as the swamp sunflower – and sneezeweed because their leaves were once used to make snuff.