Flower Spotlight: Meet the Beautiful Blanket Flower

We all love to see beautiful bursts of color in our summer gardens, and filling your garden with colorful blooms that attract butterflies is the best way to transform your garden from mere property into a work of art. But, let’s face it: you don’t always have the time or the energy to be outside pruning, watering and fertilizing.

Meet the blanket flower! This colorful beauty is hardy almost anywhere in the U.S. and is extremely low maintenance. This no-fuss perennial even blooms the first year out, so you can start enjoying it right away.

Read on to learn more about this carefree firecracker!

Bright Bursts of Color

Blanket flowers boast vivid-colored blooms that can be solid wine-red, peach, yellow or orange, or can be combinations of orange and yellow or red and yellow (see photos above). These beautiful blooms will not only attract your eye; they’ll also attract plenty of butterflies to your garden, giving you a bonus color show.

Dwarf blanket flowers grow to a height of about 10 inches, while taller varieties reach up to 30 inches high. Their bright colors make them wonderful choices for borders.

“If you Can’t Make it There,” you’re not a Blanket Flower

Lots of perennials are pretty touchy about the climate they live in, and will easily die from too much heat or frost. The blanket flower, however, is the perfect combination of beauty and toughness.

This lovely perennial can survive just fine in USDA Hardiness Zones 3 through 9, which covers pretty much all of the contiguous U.S., from central Minnesota all the way to Miami, Florida. No matter where you live, there’s probably a blanket flower for you.

Poor Soil? No Problem!

Roses are beautiful, but they sure can be fussy when it comes to soil quality and other conditions. Not so, the blanket flower!

The blanket flower is drought-tolerant, has very few problems with insects or disease, and survives well in soil with low nutrient levels. The two things that the blanket flower absolutely can’t do without are good soil drainage and plenty of sunlight.

Make sure your flowers have those two things, and you’re golden.

So don’t let her good looks fool you… the blanket flower is one tough cookie!

Plant perennial blanket flowers in your garden for flowers next summer, or in a pot for flowers this year. Click here for instructions, and enjoy the colors!

Photos courtesy of coloredby, Jim McCulloch, One Day Closer, and Robert Nunnally.