The Fast-Growing Coneflower That Blooms Dark Pink Flowers From Summer Until Fall

Whether you love cutting beautiful flowers in the summer for your table or want to add vibrant color to a drab part of your yard, the Kismet Raspberry coneflower (Echinacea 'Tnechkr') is an ideal choice. To get a jump on the growing season, plant this pollinator-favorite flower in early spring for summer blooms. A fast-growing plant with an extended period of flowering, this coneflower excels in borders, sunny meadow spaces, and containers. And as a perennial, it will continue to grace your garden with its deep, bold color year after year.

This variety of coneflower is part of the Kismet series out of Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc. Developed as a hybrid flower, it can be purchased as individual plants directly from a supplier to ensure timely blooms early in the season. If you've ever wondered why you should add coneflowers to a chaos garden, this variety with its showy flowers and incredible raspberry-pink color may convince you. 

As a Top Performer at the 2018 Colorado State University Perennial Trial, this plant outperformed other varieties thanks to prolific flowering, with flowers that continued to look pretty even as they started to die. Allow for plants to grow up to 3 feet high and 3 feet wide, which fills in any garden space nicely but remains relatively compact. The flowers themselves grow 4 inches wide and feature a gold-brown cone.

An adaptable flower, the Kismet Raspberry coneflower requires only a little maintenance to ensure consistent, heavy blooming. Some common issues it can tolerate include deer browsing, drought conditions, and dense clay soil. This variety is best grown in USDA Hardiness Zones 4 through 10, where it typically continues blooming straight through August. 

Even after the robust summer blooming, it should maintain an upright structure with later blooms through the fall. Plan to grow this coneflower in an area with full sun for best blooming, and allow for the soil to dry a little between watering. If you choose to grow the Kismet Raspberry coneflower in your garden, look out for late July for its peak bloom period. 

To decide what to plant with coneflowers for a low-maintenance landscape, consider finding flowers with complementary colors or those with peak blooms immediately before or after this variety. Bee balm (Monarda didyma), for example, blooms well between July and September; plus, it will also attract butterflies and other pollinators. Another flower that will complement the Kismet Raspberry coneflower is the blazing star (Liatris spicata), with its long, upright growth and spiky light purple flowers. Both of these flowers have similar low-maintenance requirements to coneflower.