Great Design Plant: Blanket Flower Brings Year-Round Cheer
A merry, native wildflower, blanket flower brightens America’s wild areas from sea to shining sea — from the balmy beach dunes of South Florida into the Rocky Mountains, all of the way through Canada into Alaska.
You could not ask for much more in a native plant, either. Blanket flowers attract butterflies and other pollinators, their heavy taproot makes them exceedingly drought tolerant, and they withstand both extreme cold and extreme heat, in addition to salty beachfront conditions. If you have already experienced this year’s first frost, add blanket flower in your container garden now for a festive announcement; store seeds and plant them in the spring garden to get blooms in precisely the exact same year. Gardeners in warm-winter climates can plant them in the ground now and appreciate flowers for most of the year.
Botanical names: Gaillardia x grandiflora (hybrid of Gaillardia pulchella and Gaillardia aristata)
Common names: Blanket flower, Indian blanket, firewheel
Resource: Hybrid of 2 species that occur across North America
Where it will grow: Hardy to -40 degrees Fahrenheit (USDA zones 3 to 10; find your zone) in well-drained soil
Water requirement: Drought tolerant once established
Light requirement: Partial shade to full sun
Mature size: as many as 2 feet tall and broad
Benefits and tolerances: Native; attracts birds, bees and butterflies; drought tolerant; blooms throughout the year and makes an excellent ground cover
Seasonal attention: Blooms from spring into fall, or throughout the entire year in mild climates
When to plant: Plant container blanket blossoms in the ground anytime before frost; plant seeds in spring and enjoy the blooms in container gardens for a festive fall announcement.
Jeffrey Gordon Smith Landscape Architecture
Distinguishing traits. The blanket flower you are likely to watch offered for sale is Gaillardia x grandiflora, a hybrid of two indigenous American species from other surfaces of the nation, G. pulchella and G. aristata. Gaillardia pulchella grows naturally across most of eastern and central North America, easily adapting to areas, forest clearings and even sand dunes. Gaillardia aristata is its southern counterpart and grows anywhere from the hot deserts in Mexico into the frigid Canadian Rocky Mountains. Whatever the species or cultivar, however, they all go by the same common names: firewheel, blanket flower and Indian blanket.
To make matters more complex, blanket flower selections come in a multitude of colours and patterns, blurring the lines between yellow and red in endless ways. Some, such as ‘Fanfare’, have tightly rolled burgundy petals that flare out at the tips in an explosion of bright golden colour. ‘Arizona Apricot’ (Gaillardia x grandiflora ‘Arizona Apricot’, zones 3 to 10) seems to have sunsets painted onto its blossom in a soft gradation from orange to yellow, appearing much lighter and more subdued compared to the more-flamboyant selections. Other cultivars are notable due to their habits. ‘Goblin’ (Gaillardia x grandiflora‘Goblin’, zones 3 to 10) is a rainbow selection with a clean shape and tight clusters of blooms on short stems, but its own fat petals of orange and crimson are anything but modest.
The best way to utilize it. Use blanket flower as a durable ground cover, let it reseed and multiply in naturalistic prairie gardens, or just enjoy it as a perennial on your flower beds. Since cultivars are available with striped flowers colored from yellow to crimson and burgundy, you are sure to find a choice that fits in with your garden’s color scheme.
Hummingbirds are drawn to the nectar, and songbirds love the nutritious seeds (they’re related to sunflowers, after all), so resist the urge to deadhead the spent blossoms. The plant will continue to blossom while birds line up to your buffet.
Planting notes. Most nursery selections are ready to plant and be abandoned to their own devices, but taller selections can gain from staking to keep the tall flowers from flopping over.
Blanket blossoms don’t like thick clay soil, nor do they perform well with wet feet or too much shade. Nevertheless, they could withstand just about anything else nature throws their way and really perform better under conditions that many other perennials and annuals can’t handle. If your blanket flower isn’t performing well, try moving it into an even more peculiar spot in the backyard, with bad soil, sand, heat and intense sunlight.
Plants grown in containers could be successfully overwintered indoors if they’re given a sunny place, but the easiest way to store them is to allow the seed heads grow, then harvest the seeds and plant them for blossoms within months.
More: Be Your Own Wildflower Nursery