Helianthemum Golden Queen - Rock Rose

Helianthemum 'Golden Queen' is an excellent variety of rockrose, with a long and abundant bright yellow flowering with an orange heart and a beautiful spreading habit. Its small undulate cup-shaped flowers are bright yellow and bloom from late spring to the end of summer, on a small foliage of a somewhat greyish green. This hardy subshrub in well-drained soil forms a beautiful evergreen ground cover for sunny areas of the garden, such as rockeries or the top of a wall. It is a good plant for a dry or mineral garden, also delightful in pots. 

Belonging to the family of rockroses, Helianthemum 'Golden Queen' is one of the horticultural hybrids resulting from the cross-breeding of Helianthemum apenninum, native to southern Europe, and H. mummularium, widespread in Europe and Turkey. Like its ancestors, 'Golden Queen' loves limestone, rocky, sandy soils and the sun. It forms a low, spreading and dense undershrub, in a cushion shape, 25cm (10in) tall and 40 to 50cm (16 to 20in) wide. Its evergreen winter foliage is composed of very small linear leaves, more or less greyish green depending on the dryness of the soil. It highlights its abundant and luminous flowering of bright yellow with orange throat. From May-June to August-September, it is covered with a multitude of small flowers, 2.5cm (1in) in diameter, with flat cups, five petals, slightly crumpled, adorned with a bouquet of golden stamens.

Helianthemum means in Greek " sunflower ", an appropriate name for these flowers that only open in sunny situations. Its delicate and fine flowers do not last long, but constantly renew themselves, sometimes until autumn if the weather permits.

Rockrose is the ideal plant to enhance a rocky garden, a sunny slope, cascading over a wall, in paving stones... Cultivating it in pots or containers for terraces also suits it very well. It can also be considered for the creation of green walls and green roofs. Combine it with other rockery plants (Erigeron, Erodiums, Gypsophila, Mount Olympus St. John's Wort), but also with perennial plants such as lavenders, rock iris, Sedums or bloody cranesbill. Its flowers blend delicately with the grey foliage of Stachys, dwarf Artemisias or Ballotas.