Gaillardia Fanfare Blaze

This brand new Gaillardia Fanfare Blaze offers flowering of an unprecedented, truly original and flamboyant appearance. It produces flowers similar to daisies, with a reddish centre, adorned with a crown of peripheral trumpet-shaped florets, red at the base, burnt orange, ending in yellow tips. This flowering extends from June to October on compact and sturdy plants that withstand the wind. This short-lived perennial has a strong constitution, tolerating cold, heat and drought, and poor, rocky soils. It will bring an exotic and warm touch to sunny flower beds.

Gaillardia Fanfare Blaze is a horticultural hybrid resulting from the cross-breeding of several botanical species, including Gaillardia aristata, a perennial native to the Great Plains of North America, and Gaillardia pulchella, an almost annual plant native to northern Mexico and the southern and central United States. Belonging, like its two parents and like sunflowers, to the large family of Asteraceae, this hybrid has inherited from its parents a beautiful hardiness, increased longevity, extraordinary floriferousness, and rapid growth combined with a remarkably undemanding nature. 'Fanfare Blaze' forms a clump of 60 cm (24in) in all directions, covered from summer to autumn with large heads measuring 4 to 7 cm (2 to 3in) wide, where pollinating insects gather. They are multicoloured, in a palette of warm and particularly vibrant shades. The entire flower is animated by a large reddish to blood-red heart. The foliage, mainly basal, is composed of narrow, slightly lobed or deeply cut, deep green and velvety leaves.

A little outdated today, gaillardias, along with coreopsis grandiflora and other gaura, are nevertheless among the champions of floral abundance. Even the wild form Gaillardia aristata proves to be very floriferous. Their only drawback is their poor tolerance of ambient humidity, even in well-drained soil. In gardens in warmer southern regions, especially in poor, rocky soils, this plant is truly a boon: it will accompany lavenders, blood-red or ashy perennial geraniums, artemisias, and grasses, which are equally undemanding and floriferous plants.