Heleniums: the Road to El Dorado

This is about my helenium journey. Everything has to be a journey nowadays, it's the fashion. One has to have a weight-loss journey, a mental-health journey - you name it, there has to be a journey for it.  I'd normally be a bit old for such modish metaphors, but finding the right plant for the Bold and Brilliant Garden involves a bit of a journey too - often a journey to the wheelie bin to dump your inferior varieties! 

Heleniums are perennial daisies with much to recommend them. The best varieties flower for a long time from June onwards in lovely shades of browny-red, or browny-orange, or yellow. The flowers are neat and plentiful. They do need a little more care than other types of daisy - good watering, dead-heading - but they are worth it. 

 

 

 

My helenium journey started with Helenium "Moerheim Beauty" because it was recommended by Sarah Raven in The Bold and Brilliant Garden as well as by other people.   It is a reddy-brown shuttlecock flower, most attractive.  You can see it in the picture above, the browny daisy on the right.  Sarah Raven suggested it because it had a long flowering period.  But I'm a demanding gardener and did not find it quite long-flowering enough, so I was not completely satisfied.


Then Helenium "Sahin's Early Flowerer" came onto the market.  It was a bit more yellowy than "Moerheim Beauty" but was still browny-orange when it comes into flower.  It flowered for ages.  I was pleased with myself since I started growing "Sahin's" several years before the garden centres caught on.  Suddenly everyone was selling it.


At one time I was growing so much "Sahin's" that I was giving away large amounts every spring.  Then I noticed it had a drawback: it was not a great survivor.  Too often a clump would disappear because it faced too much competition.  This is a fault common to most varieties of helenium, it is not peculiar to "Sahin's".  But be that as it may, it won't do for me.  I need to have my plants cheek-by-jowl.  They all need to cope with being crowded.  As it was, eventually, from having loads of "Sahin's" I was astonished that I had none at all.


Then another new variety came into commerce.  This was called Helenium "El Dorado".  It was yellow.  It was a survivor.  It endured!  I was pleased to see that Carol Klein agreed: she told her viewers that "El Dorado" was the one to go for because you won't lose it.  Its period of flowering seems quite as good as that of "Sahin's".


This is a simplified version of my helenium journey.  There were other varieties which only survived in my garden for a year or two; no need to dwell on them!  

 The lesson is that there are quite a number of criteria for a really good variety of a plant.  An impactful and long flowering season is very important, but so too is that the plant has "staying power" and will come back easily to be enjoyed year after year.


Helenium "El Dorado" behind Alstroemeria "Indian Summer" and Anenome "Prinz Heinrich"




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