Echinacea Cara Mia Rose (Coneflower) // Gorgeous, Compact, Free Flowering & Very Colorful Perennial

Well, good afternoon and welcome to Over-the-Vest Nurseries. It's a beautiful sunny day in mid-summer. It's certainly a little on the toasty side for yours truly, but there's a very nice breeze blowing, so while it might be causing a little bit of interference on the microphone, let me tell you that it's certainly making me feel a little bit more comfortable with this lovely breeze blowing through the nursery. But if there's one type of plant that really loves the sun, and soaks it up and puts on a terrific show in our gardens during the summer months, it is of course these things, the Coneflowers, or Echinacea as they're known botanically. Now, if you'd like to find out more about the plants that we grow here on the nursery, ones that are available through a network of garden centers that are situated right throughout our region, that's the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states of the U.S., can I suggest that you think about clicking and subscribing to our channel, because then as we post new videos like this one, you'll find they'll turn up automatically in your feed. And with Coneflowers, there's really been some terrific strides forward in breeding in recent years. Lots of really great colors, many of them short, compact varieties that put on a terrific show. And if you're looking for a variety that grows short and compact, has a nice dwarf habit, gives you lots and lots of very pretty flowers, that's fragrant, and is perfect whether you plant it as a single plant, or you plant it in a larger mass grouping, then let me introduce you to this terrific variety that was raised by Harini Kolhapera at Terra Nova Nurseries. This is Echinacea Caramea Rose. Now, one of the things about this variety is that it's really very free flowering. When I zoom in here on this plant on the end of the wagon, you'll see that it is literally loaded with lots and lots of buds. Buds that when they begin to open, you'll see come out with these distinctly very colorful kind of flat-shaped flowers. Then you'll see that as they develop, the center of the flower develops into a more anemone-shaped and rounded-shaped flower. You'll also see that this is carried on strong sturdy stems, which is really good because they're not floppy, and if you're interested in using them as a cut flower, you'll find that they'll cut and bring in, so that you can bring them in and put them in a vase of water to enjoy them inside your home as well as outdoors. But of course, if there's one thing that I would suggest you do with these, and that is that you plant them out somewhere in a sunny, and this is important, well-drained site. Coneflowers, or hybrids of this one, are ones that have been developed from native species. They love to grow in our sunny, summer conditions, but they also need really good drainage to be able to survive and perennialize in our garden. So just make sure that you don't plant them in a damp spot or in heavy soils. An average garden soil will be absolutely fine, as long as it's free-draining. The other characteristic about this plant is that it starts flowering really quite early in the year, often well ahead of other varieties. So it will often start flowering in early summer, and then will repeat right through the summer months, all the way through to the frost of the autumn time. Add to that the fact that it only grows about 16 to 20 inches high, and makes a clump of about two and a half foot or so wide, you can see that if you planted just one plant in a small bed, or a border, or perhaps at the front of a planting display of other perennials, I think you can see what a terrific show this variety will put on. But then let me pan across this particular batch here, and I think you'll see what a really terrific effect you'll get if you're able to plant this in a mass display somewhere. And that's really good because of the short, compact dwarf habit, and all of these flower buds that are popping up. Now one thing I would say if you're thinking about growing this variety is, that as the flowers begin to mature, and as you see this is now in its prime, but as it begins to mature you'll see that the petals here will start to turn a brownish color. At that point you can go in with a pair of hedging shears, or a pair of scissors, or pruners or something, and just about where my fingers are here, you can snip out the old flowering stems, and that then will encourage it to make lots and lots of these secondary flower buds that will then spring out from the base of the crown, to keep that succession of flowering going right through the whole of the summer season into the fall. So short and compact, very free flowering, hardy to zone for, fragrant, it will make an excellent cut flower, and will also make a plant that you could put into containers if you wanted to grow a perennial in containers too. Lots and lots of really good things to say about this variety, which incidentally is named after a saying or a name that comes from Italy. Apparently it means, the word Caramea means my beloved in Italian, and when you look at these gorgeous flowers, you can see how accurately this variety has been named. This is Echinacea Caramea, and the variety is Rose.