Helenium Mardi Gras

A cottage garden without Helenium is not complete. Helenium 'Mardi Gras' is a medium-sized variety that offers flamboyant and changing daisies in late summer, where butterflies gather. The orange ligulate petals are generously splashed with vermilion. The upright and sturdy stems of this robust perennial sway gracefully in the wind, above vigorous foliage. Easy to grow in the sun and in moist soil, this plant offers beautiful flowers for bouquets.

Hybrid heleniums are often derived from Helenium autumnale, a perennial native to North America, which is usually found by marshes. The cultivar Mardi Gras offers a very rich and changing colour, and a fairly compact habit. It has an upright habit with stems reaching 60cm (24in) in height and 40cm (16in) in spread. Its leaves, coloured a bright green, are lanceolate in shape with smooth margins and are arranged alternately along the stems. During the months of July to September, a myriad of flowers will appear at the top of the stems. Resembling 5cm (2in) diameter daisies, the flowers have a cone-shaped centre in orange-brown, gradually giving way to yellow stamens. At the periphery, cream-coloured petals, called florets, fade to a vermilion hue, completing the colour harmony on the same plant. The warm tones of its flowering announce the beginning of autumn flowers.

Helenium 'Mardi Gras' is a robust and hardy plant (-20C°) that is rarely diseased and loves well-drained, moist, and ordinary soil. Easy to grow, it thrives in sunny exposures, planted in slopes, flower beds, or even containers. Despite all these qualities, heleniums remain rare in gardens. Perhaps because their warm tones announce autumn; yet they are the ideal complement to asters. This Helenium pairs very well with autumnal plants such as asters or Heucheras, but it can also be associated with deciduous Euonymus with sublime foliage, perennial Chrysanthemums, or Rudbeckias. The felty foliage of Stachys or salvias greatly enhances the warm colour of its flowering.

The genus name Helenium, chosen by Linnaeus, seems to have been given to this plant because of the legend of Helen of Troy. The flowers are said to have sprung from the ground where she had shed her tears.