Helenium Moerheim Beauty

Helenium 'Moertheim Beauty', of beautiful stature and particularly floriferous, is a flamboyant variety of Helenium that will make a big impact at the back of lower perennial borders. Its flowers, of beautiful size, display a beautiful collar in changing tones of red and coppery orange surrounding a central cone of chocolate colour, sprinkled with golden stamens. Flowering all summer, this variety equipped with strong stems is as spectacular in the garden as it is in bouquets. Heleniums are hardy and robust perennials, easy to grow in the sun in any good but not too dry garden soil.

The natural varieties of Heleniums are perennials native to North America, they are generally found around swamps. The hybrid 'Moertheim Beauty' has been awarded in England by the R.H.S (Royal Horticultural Society), for its ornamental qualities and its performance in the garden. This variety offers a vibrant, almost uniform colour, and vigorous and sturdy vegetation in the face of bad weather. This plant with an upright habit develops leafy stems in spring, generally reaching 90cm (35in) in height. The leaves, coloured in a very bright green, with a lanceolate shape and smooth margin, are arranged alternately along the stems. The flowering is continuously renewed from June to September. During the months of July to September, a large number of flowers succeed each other at the top of the stems. Resembling 7cm (3in) diameter daisies, these heads are centred around a brown-coloured cone gradually giving way to yellow stamens. At the periphery, coloured florets of red fade into a coppery orange hue. It is when the sun hits them that these flamboyant colours are the most astonishing. After the flowers, seeds follow which are appreciated by birds and some small mammals. The vegetation of the Helenium disappears in winter and reforms in spring.

Helenium 'Moertheim Beauty' is a very hardy and disease-resistant plant. It appreciates ordinary soils that remain slightly moist and sunny exposures. Easy to grow, it blooms equally well on slopes, in borders, or in containers. Despite all these qualities, Heleniums remain rare in gardens. Perhaps because their warm tones herald autumn. This Helenium pairs very well with plants such as asters, agastaches and nepetas, goldenrods, grasses, or rudbeckias. The velvety foliage of stachys or shrubby artemisias greatly enhances the warm hue of its flowers.