Delicious Candy Coneflower

Light Needs

Partial Sun to Full Sun

(At Least 5 Hours of Direct Sunlight)

Mature Height

1.5-2 Feet

Mature Spread

14-16 Inches

Growing Zones

4 to 8

A perennial garden favorite, Echinacea has enjoyed a decades old reputation for being a lovely wildflower that has been tamed and brought into the everyday garden as a mainstay. Gardeners love Echinacea for their bright colors and daisy-like flower petals that are held above the foliage on stiff stems, making it an easy to care for plant addition to landscape borders, garden beds and container gardens everywhere. A semi-double flower, Delicious Candy Coneflower is a deep fuchsia pink color with a slightly downward droop to its pinked edge petals. It makes a wonderful cut flower to extend its lovely color into your home.

A native wildflower in North America, Echinacea is a tough survivor, thriving in the prairies and dry meadows in most every region of the United States except the extremely cold and extremely hot. It is heat and drought tolerant, and continues to bloom throughout the hottest months of summer. Hardy in Zones 4-8, you will find this lovely perennial in gardens across the country, although they do not thrive in salt prone areas of the coasts. Deer typically do not browse on them. Shorter and more compact than its companion varieties of Echinacea, Delicious Candy will soon become a favorite in your summer garden.

Delicious Candy Coneflower Care

Echinacea is tolerant of a wide variety of soil types, average, fertile or poor; and tolerates a wide variation in soil pH, acidic, neutral and alkaline. It’s main requirement: well draining soil. Although it tolerates a lot of varying soil conditions, it will not tolerate soggy soil. Most wildflower-derived garden perennials do not require fertilization. In fact, fertilizer, if applied, can cause the plant to grow thin and leggy stems, not able to hold up its flower. Water needs, once established in your garden, are few. Water weekly in extreme drought conditions, or if you have this planted in a container garden. Preferred soil pH is 5.8 to 6.2, but remember, it tolerates a wide variation. This full sun to part shade perennial will delight you in every way with its easy care and beautiful form and color.

Deadheading will extend your bloom time, sometimes by a month or so. Pruning is not necessary for the health of the plant unless you have yellowed or dead foliage or stems. Just remove those to the ground when this occurs. In mid to late fall, consider leaving spent blooms to develop seed as songbirds love to visit your garden in search of this valuable food source for them. The dried, bristly cones make an unique texture in your winter garden as well. Bees and butterflies will be frequent visitors to your garden.

Delicious Candy Coneflower Spacing

Space your plants 14 to 16 inches apart to allow room to grow. Delicious Candy Coneflower grows to 24 inches tall and 16 inches wide at maturity. It is very disease resistant, but all flowering plants appreciate the good air circulation that proper spacing promotes. Whether grown in a container on your patio or porch, or massed out in drifts of color in your landscape, you will appreciate the bright neon pink color and compact form of Delicious Candy Coneflower this spring!