Helenium Fiesta

Helenium 'Fiesta' is a recent variety of Helenium, remarkable for its colour and abundance of its daisy-like semi-double flowers, with round petals of a complex burgundy-blue hue, widely marginated with gold and orange. The well-branched plant forms a bushy mass and is fully blooming, in a warm shade that is welcome at the end of summer and early autumn. Stunning alongside the blue stars of asters, this perennial perennial certified by the Royal Horticultural Society will find its place in the background of sunny beds, in fresh, preferably limestone soil.

Heleniums are perennials native to North America, where they are usually found on the edge of swamps. The 'Fiesta' cultivar has a very rich colour and vigorous growth, even if it is rather slow-growing. It has a bushy habit with stems reaching 1.20m (4ft) in height. The leaves, coloured a bright green, are lanceolate in shape with smooth margins and are arranged alternately along the stems. During the months from August to October, a myriad of flowers appear at the top of the stems. The heads resemble semi-double daisies, measuring 4 to 5cm (2in) in diameter; in the centre, the cone is brown in colour and gradually gives way to yellow-orange stamens that form a concentric circle. At the periphery, broad and slightly crumpled florets, coloured dark red with grey-blue reflections, show a 5mm (0in) wide yellow-orange border. The warm tones of this almost unreasonable flowering herald the beginning of autumn flowers and foliage with fanfare.

The 'Fiesta' Helenium is a robust and hardy plant that is never sick. It appreciates ordinary, rather moist soils and sunny exposures. It is easy to grow, and it blooms equally well on slopes, in beds, and in containers on the terrace. Despite all these qualities, Heleniums remain rare in gardens. Perhaps because their warm tones announce autumn a little too quickly, while the garden and the gardener are still trying to hold onto the last summer blooms; yet they are the perfect complement to asters. 'Fiesta', in combination with Rudbeckias, pairs very well with autumn plants like Heucheras and Helianthus, but it can also be associated with a deciduous Euonymus, whose foliage ignites at the first cold, or with the sumptuous Dyer's madder. In a different setting, the felty foliage of Stachys or Salvia greatly enhances the warm shade of this flowering.