My clients (in Portland, Oregon) often want a garden design with lots of flowers for making flower arrangements. I’m happy to create plantings in the landscape that can do double duty, plants that solve a problem. This tall black-eyed Susan plant, Rudbeckia l. ‘Herbstonne’ works well to screen a fence and use the flowers in the vase from mid summer to frost. They are dramatic all on their own or paired with a more dainty flower. They are easy to grow and are very useful to pollinators.
Types of Black-Eyed Susan for Your Cutting Garden
If you want to use Rudbeckia for summer to fall flower arrangements, your choices are abundant. Some varieties start flowering in June, others start in mid July and may continue til frost. Deadhead or remove spent flowers on your plants to encourage new blooms.
Short Lived Perennial Rudbeckia have an Abundance of Flowers
Rudbeckia hirta: A native that hosts some butterflies. Grow the species if you want to be serious about providing for native insects or buy a few and allow it to reseed. The species is tall ( 4’ ) so expect some leaning here and there. It is called a short lived perennial but can behave like an annual or a biennial in Portland gardens some years. It will wear itself out flowering profusely in a year or two, so be sure to let some seedlings remain.
Popular varieties of Rudbeckia h. like ‘Denver Daisy’ and ‘Irish Eyes’ offer attractive bright green seed heads. Their progeny (seedlings) will not necessarily look the same as what you bought but there is a lot of fun seeing what they look like over the years. Bees and other pollinators will like them too but unless it is the species some of our native pollinators won’t be able to feed or host on the cultivated varieties. This is a very easy plant to grow.
Long Lasting Perennial Rudbeckia
My favorite is Rudbeckia subtomentosa ‘Little Henry’, with an unusual spoon shape at the end of each petal and it is about 24 to 30” tall so a dwarf version of ‘Henry Eilers’ which is closer to 4’ tall. It starts flowering in late summer to frost.
Obviously, (because I write about this one so often), Rudbeckia lacinata ‘Herbstonne’ or ‘Autumn Sun’, reaching up to 7 feet tall, offers a vibrant clean yellow flower with a large and bright green cone in the center.
Rudbeckia fulgida, the species at 4′ plus can be too tall for some of my gardens. Varieties like ‘Goldstrum‘ are tall enough for longer stems but much shorter than the species. Little Gold Star is a great plant but at 18” tall, don’t expect long stems. It’s compact and with a neat sort of uniform shape it looks good enough for use in a front yard planting plan.
Rudbeckia triloba: Also called brown-eyed Susan, this species has an airy, billowing shape to the plant and requires more summer water than hirta or most perennial forms of Rudbeckia. I love this flower in the vase because it is a smaller more delicate flower than other black-eyed Susans. Cultivated varieties of Rudbeckia triloba can include shades of oranges and dark reds, as well as the more typical goldenrod color. It seeds about intensely, is tall and will lean into other plants which can be charming. If you like order in your garden pass this one by. Here is one from our local Portland nursery Xera called ‘Prairie Glow’.
Vase Preparation Tips-Making your flower arrangement last
On line you will find all kinds of advice for treating the stems to help them uptake water and therefore make the flower last longer. I’m a big fan of super simple Simon and I swear some people want to make things more difficult. So I never treat the stems of rudbeckia with flame or hot water or pounding them, before putting them in the vase. I place all the flowers in cool water as soon as possible, remove any leaves below water level, and then recut the stems at an angle. Once that is done they go in the vase.
I don’t use preservative packets and I won’t judge if you do but my flowers last a long time because I change the water every few days. If I have time… and only if I love love love the arrangement… I make fresh cuts on the bottom of the stems every few days and change the water. Wow does that ever make my cut flowers last a lot longer!
Stripping petals from some black-eyed Susan flowers to use just the naked seed head on the stem adds texture and drama to my arrangement. Many seed heads of Rudbeckia are a zippy lime or olive green, offering a wonderful color contrast too. They dry to a dark brown and remain useful in the vase for at least a month or two.
Considerations for Wildlife and Pollinators
How to manage the taller species plants that are so great for wildlife (and your vase)? 4’ or taller can be difficult for small gardens. The true natives, species versus cultivated varieties, are much better for native bees and pollinators because the varieties don’t look right to the bee or pollinator and they don’t visit them. We have hundreds of native bees and pollinators and they struggle to find food or a host plant.
You can employ what my gramma called “pinching back’. Cut your plant to ½ its height in mid to late May. I use my by pass hand pruner for the job not my fingers. The stems are too tough for fingers. Your plant will still flower lots but the stem will be shorter and sturdier for the rest of the growing season and still long enough for flower arranging.
Feed Winter Finches with Rudbeckia Seed Heads
I stop deadheading in early fall to allow the plant to focus its energy for seed production. The seeds become food for finches and black cap chickadees and the dried cones look good in my winter garden. Solitary native bees will use the hollow stems for nests so I leave the old stems as long as I can.
My Favorite Fall Flower Arrangement
My favorite fall flower arrangement uses Rudbeckia ‘Herbstonne’ with variegated Miscanthus grass blades and large, lacy white cones of Hydrangea paniculata for an elegant late-summer arrangement. The rudbeckia flowers dry losing their petals and leaving behind the seed head along with the dry hydrangea flower head. This bouquet can be maintained as a dried flower arrangement for months.
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Are you looking for a thoughtful planting plan focused on color, visual satisfaction, or feeding pollinators and birds? Do you want a designer who knows more than just trees and shrubs? Perhaps you want a low-maintenance backyard that still supports cutting flowers and feeds bees? You can have beauty, low maintenance, and pollinator-friendly plantings. Just ask us to create it for you. I return phone calls and respond quickly to contact forms.
