Feast your eyes on coneflowers

Feeling hungry? How about some Tomato Soup and Mac 'n' Cheese? If you're a gardener, you can have this for lunch, then tend to them in your garden!

Remember when purple coneflowers (echinacea purpurea) were ... well ... purple? The original purple coneflower is a cold-hardy, summer-blooming native flower adaptable to many gardens around the country. Coneflowers don't require supplemental watering (they hate wet feet), grow in full sun and boast seedheads that are a favorite of many birds, especially goldfinches. Bees and butterflies also find these plants attractive. It's hard to imagine how these tough native prairie flowers, which stand up to heat, humidity and drought, could possibly be improved, but they have.

Over the last decade, breeders have made some amazing breakthroughs in color, flower form and even scent. Purple coneflowers aren't just purple anymore. Hybrid echinacea varieties are available in a rainbow of colors including whites, yellows, oranges, pinks, reds and greens. As a bonus, these plants are touted as being deer-resistant and are generally hardy in zones four through nine.

Today's coneflowers are part of a series that reads like a gourmet menu. For the adventuresome or "cone crazy" gardener, there is a smorgasbord of coneflowers to know and grow. Here are a few of the recent introductions:

Tomato Soup and Mac 'n' Cheese. For a bit of nostalgia, try growing these two varieties together, and you'll be guaranteed to have a bright border full of happy gardening memories. White Flower Farm, one source of these new plants, offers its "What's for Lunch Echinacea" collection, but it has been so popular that it's sold out for now. Both have flowers up to 5 inches across on stems approximately 26 to 30 inches tall. Tomato Soup sports tomato-red flowers that are unbelievably bright. Mac 'n' Cheese features narrow, bright golden-yellow petals. Put these two together for a showstopping gourmet garden.

Cone-fections. If you're finished with lunch, you're probably ready for dessert. How about a taste of Raspberry Truffle or Coconut Lime? These are part of the series of Cone-fections hybrid double-flowering coneflowers as well as some others with delicious names hybridized by AB-Cultivars and introduced by Plants Nouveau. The names themselves are irresistible: pinkish-red Raspberry Truffle, light-orange Marmalade, gold-yellow Pineapple Sundae, creamy-white to dark-rose Strawberry Shortcake, white to pale-lime Coconut Lime, bright pink Cotton Candy and Pink Sorbet — and that's not all.

Hot Papaya is one of my favorites in this series, with its bright reddish-orange, fully double flowers with pompom centers that "seem to glow in the garden," according to master hybridizer Arie Blom. Flowering starts early in June and continues until August. This sturdy plant reaches about 30 to 36 inches tall.

What could possibly be next after an array of new colors, double-flowering varieties and plants with interesting cones? How about Echinacea Summer Cocktail (see images at www.coneflower.com). This introduction from Marco van Noort features several colors on one plant from yellow to orange to pink. According to the website, it should be available next year.

Several plant trials are under way across the county to see how the new varieties perform under various conditions. While many of these new introductions are not yet available to the gardening public, if you are cone crazy for coneflowers, many online plant suppliers have a "product alert" to notify you when the plants become available. Put these fascinating plants on your gardening wish list and enjoy your garden buffet.

Joe Lamp'l, host of "Growing a Greener World"on PBS, is a Master Gardener and author. For more information, visitwww.joegardener.com.