Gaillardia grandiflora Mesa Yellow

The Blanketflower, Gaillardia x grandiflora 'Mesa Yellow'™, is a recent and vigorous American cultivar. It offers endless flowering from June to October, drawing resources even from the poorest soils to provide the never-ending spectacle of its bright yellow flowers, resembling large daisies. This medium-sized blanketflower forms beautiful clumps of stems and gray-green fuzzy foliage, reaching about 50 cm (20in) in all directions. With its regular and compact habit, it will be perfect in a pot. This short-lived perennial has excellent health, tolerating cold, heat, and drought, but it dislikes humidity, which is its only weakness. It is one of those almost foolproof perennials that can find a place in any garden, regardless of its style!

Gaillardia (x) grandiflora is a horticultural hybrid resulting from cross-breeding between Gaillardia aristata, a perennial native to the central Great Plains of North America, and Gaillardia pulchella, an almost annual plant native to northern Mexico and the southern and central United States. Belonging, like its two parents and like the sunflower, to the large family of Asteraceae, this hybrid has inherited from its first parent a strong hardiness and increased longevity, and from the second parent its extraordinary floriferousnes, rapid growth, and extremely undemanding nature. 'Mesa Yellow' forms clumps of about 50 cm (20in) in all directions, covered from summer to autumn with large capitula measuring 5 to 10 cm (2 to 4in), where pollinators gather. Their colour is a bright and intense yellow that does not fade in the sun. The foliage, mainly basal, is composed of narrow, slightly lobed or deeply cut leaves, greyish-green and fuzzy.

A bit old-fashioned today, Gaillardia, along with Coreopsis grandiflora and Gaura, are among the champions of abundant flowering. Even the wild form G. aristata turns out to be very floriferous. Their only flaw is their poor tolerance to ambient humidity, even in well-drained soil. In gardens in hotter southern regions, especially in mediocre soils, this plant is truly a blessing: it will accompany lavender, blood-red or ash-coloured perennial geraniums, artemisias, and grasses, which are equally undemanding and floriferous plants. Thanks to its regular, upright, and compact habit, the 'Mesa Yellow' blanketflower is well-suited for container cultivation.