Gaillardia Arizona Red Shades

Gaillardia x grandiflora 'Arizona Red Shades' is distinguished by the precocity of its flowering, the beautiful ruby, purple and gold colours of its large flowers, and its compact habit, well suited for small spaces, rockeries, borders, and sunny terraces. Like all gaillardias, it is a perennial that is both hardy and robust, almost foolproof in the sun, in any well-drained garden soil. It blooms as long as summer lasts, and its maintenance consists of removing faded flowers as they appear.

Gaillardia (x) grandiflora is a horticultural hybrid resulting from the cross-breeding between Gaillardia aristata, a perennial species native to the great central plains of North America, and G. pulchella, an almost annual plant native to northern Mexico and the south and center of the United States. Belonging, like its two parents and like the sunflower, to the large family of Asteraceae, this hybrid has inherited from its first parent a beautiful hardiness and increased longevity, and from the second parent its extraordinary floribundity, rapid growth, and extreme undemanding nature. ' Arizona Red' quickly forms a clump of about 30-35 cm (12-14in) in all directions. Its flowering begins in May-June depending on the climate, about a month before that of other varieties.  It produces large flowers in wide heads of 6-7 cm (2-3in), where pollinating insects gather. Their colour is a very bright red-purple, with the petals sometimes tipped with yellow. The heart of the flower is a convex disk, golden yellow when fully open, taking on a red-violet to brown hue from the periphery to the centre, at the same time as the seeds form. The foliage, mainly basal, is composed of narrow, slightly lobed or deeply cut, light green-grey and hairy leaves, rough to the touch. The vegetation dries more or less in winter and regrows in spring.

A bit outdated today, gaillardias, along with coreopsis and Gaura, are nevertheless among the champions of floral abundance and undemanding natures. Even the wild form G. aristata proves to be very floriferous. Their only drawback is their poor tolerance to ambient humidity, even in well-drained soil. In gardens in hotter, more southern regions, especially in mediocre soils, this plant is truly a boon: it will accompany lavender, perennial blood geraniums, nepetas, seaside cineraria, and grasses, which are equally frugal and floriferous plants. In cooler soil, associate it with perennial salvias (Mainacht, Schneehügel, etc.) and delphiniums, for example. Its flowers hold up very well in bouquets.