20170422: Mined the old garden plot for soil &, in the Septic Planting (meadow), put over ridges of leaf litter & sticks. Planted most of the meadow flowers in beds that "connect the dots" of stumps.
Zone: 3 - 9
Bloom Start To End: Late Spring - Mid Fall
Habit: Compact
Seeds Per Pack: 50
Plant Height: 18 in - 20 in
Plant Width: 14 in - 16 in
Bloom Size: 4 in
Additional Characteristics: Bird Lovers, Butterfly Lovers, Direct Sow, Easy Care Plants, Ever Blooming, Flower, Free Bloomer, Needs Deadheading, Season Extenders
Bloom Color: Dark Red, Dark Yellow, Light Gold
Foliage Color: Dark Green
Light Requirements: Full Sun
Moisture Requirements: Moist, well-drained
Resistance: Cold Hardy, Disease Resistant, Drought Tolerant, Heat Tolerant, Pest Resistant
Soil Tolerance: Normal, loamy, Poor
Uses: Beds, Border, Containers, Cut Flowers, Fall Color

The blooms are huge by Black-Eyed Susan standards .... They sport petals divided into golden-yellow and mahoganhy-red, all surrounding the familiar dark brown to black center.

Unlike older Rudbeckias, this plant isn't one-tenth blooms to nine-tenths foliage -- it's compact and very well-branched, just 18 to 20 inches high and an amazing 14 to 16 inches wide. Yet more flowers crowd into this space than you'll find on Black-Eyed Susans twice its size! Cut all you like -- this is a cut-and-come-again plant, so the faster you remove the flowers, the quicker the plant sets new buds. (Deadhead the spent blooms if you aren't cutting them, unless you love, as we do, the sight of the bare black cones in autumn, their seed-filled centers providing a feast for songbirds!)

And these plants are very uniform, so if you group several together for an eye-popping display, they will all be very close in size and bloomtime. Well-branched, they just keep coming even through summer heat waves and short dry spells. All this strength comes from their breeding -- they are tetraploids, meaning they have twice the chromosomes of other Rudbeckias, which translates into better performance over their long and happy lives. And the best part? You'll see the first blooms just 80 TO 90 DAYS AFTER SOWING THE SEED. Gardening just doesn't get any easier or better than this! Zones 3-9. Pkt is 50 seeds.



black-eyed susan
Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii