Gaillardia grandiflora Tokayer

The blanketflower or Gaillardia x grandiflora 'Tokayer' offers endless flowering from June to October, drawing resources even from the poorest soils to provide the never-ending spectacle of its intensely red-pink flowers edged with a beautiful orange border, resembling large daisies in the colours of the setting sun ! The centre evolves from yellow surrounded by red to brown-red at maturity. This medium-sized blanketflower forms beautiful clumps of stems and downy grey-green foliage, reaching about 50 cm (20in) in all directions. This short-lived perennial has robust health, tolerating cold, heat, and drought, but it dislikes humidity, which is its only weakness. It is one of those almost fail-safe perennials that find a place in all gardens, regardless of their style!

The Gaillardia x grandiflora is a horticultural hybrid resulting from cross-breeding between Gaillardia aristata, a perennial native to the great central 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 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, its extraordinary floriferousness, rapid growth, and extremely undemanding nature. 'Tokayer', sometimes spelled 'Tokajer', forms a clump about 50 to 60 cm (20 to 24in) in all directions, covered from summer to autumn with large heads measuring 5 to 10 cm (2 to 4in), where pollinating insects gather. Their colour is a deep and intense pink-red that does not fade in the sun, with yellow-orange petal tips. The entire flower is animated by a contrasting bicoloured centre, with a yellow central disc and a peripheral circle of tiny red-brown florets. The foliage, mainly basal, is composed of narrow, slightly lobed or deeply cut, greenish-grey and downy leaves.

A bit old-fashioned today, blanketflowers, along with large-flowered coreopsis and other Gaura, are nevertheless among the champions of floral abundance. Even the wild form G. aristata proves to be very floriferous. Their only flaw is their poor tolerance of ambient humidity, even in well-drained soil. In gardens in moe southern, warmer regions - and especially in mediocre soils - this plant is truly a blessing: it will accompany lavenders, blood-red or ash-colored perennial geraniums, wormwoods and grasses, which are equally undemanding and floriferous plants.