Coneflower (Echinacea) care: deadheading and aster yellows disease
Coneflowers live 3 to 5 years. Deadhead for rebloom or leave seed heads for goldfinches. Remove aster yellows-infected plants immediately -- there is no cure.
I grow Echinacea purpurea in two locations on my Long Island property — a mass planting along a sunny fence line and a smaller group in a mixed border. Both have been there six years. Both are starting to thin out from the center, which is what Echinacea purpurea does at year five or six as a short-lived perennial. I have been letting the plants self-seed, and the offspring are actually more vigorous than the originals. This is the normal lifecycle of the plant. Understanding it changes how you approach coneflower care.
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Which coneflower do you have?
"Coneflower" applies to several genera. In the home garden, it almost always means Echinacea, and within Echinacea, it usually means E. purpurea, the eastern purple coneflower, the most widely sold and most adaptable species.
Echinacea purpurea — eastern purple coneflower
The standard garden coneflower. Per Missouri Botanical Garden Plant Finder, it is "easily grown in average, dry to medium, well-drained soil in full sun to part shade" and is "an adaptable plant that is tolerant of drought, heat, humidity and poor soil." Hardy in zones 3 to 8. Grows 2 to 4 feet tall. Blooms June through August.
The pruners we use every day
The Felco F-2 is the gold standard — cuts up to 1-inch branches cleanly, every part replaceable, will outlast you. Read our full pick.
Echinacea angustifolia — narrow-leaf coneflower
Native to the Great Plains. Per Clemson HGIC, it reaches 12 to 16 inches tall and is "native to the prairies of Saskatchewan and Minnesota, south to Nebraska and Texas, and is hardy from Zones 2 to 8." More drought-tolerant than E. purpurea but less tolerant of wet soils.
Echinacea pallida — pale coneflower
Per Clemson HGIC, it is native to the prairies of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri and is "hardy from Zones 4 to 8." The flowers have long, narrow, pale petals that droop noticeably from the cone — a different look than the standard purple coneflower.
A note on hybrid cultivars
Breeding has produced coneflowers in orange, yellow, red, coral, and white — the Cheyenne Spirit series, Magnus, Sombrero, PowWow Wild Berry, and many others. These can be beautiful but several caveats apply. First, many hybrid cultivars are shorter-lived than straight E. purpurea. Second, per Missouri Botanical Garden, "freely self-seeds if at least some of the seed heads are left in place" — but hybrid seeds do not breed true. If you want a self-sustaining colony, straight species or species-type cultivars like 'Magnus' and 'White Swan' are better choices.