Looking for a summer plant to "wow" your landscape? One plant family in particular not only loves the heat and tolerates drought but also creates a marvelous display over a long period of time. There’s also been an explosion of new varieties to make echinaceas one of today’s "hot" new plants.

Out of the gates from Terra Nova in Oregon are two delicious new echinacea varieties: Tomato Soup and Mac n’ Cheese. ‘Tomato Soup’ has a very unique red-orange colour that stands out in a crowd. Its huge flowers are 5 inches across, standing tall on 32 inch stems, and it blooms until frost. ‘Mac n’ Cheese’ is, as you would expect, a golden yellow that also catches attention. Its blooms are four-and-a-half inches across, standing 21 inches tall, and it is very bushy.

Double echinaceas are all the rage now with so many great varieties to choose from that provide a very good garden performance. The Cone-fectious Series are very floriferous, stocky plants with long 30-inch stems and they are ideal both as garden plants and cut flowers. Their flowers are doubles, and the centre cones are quite frilly. E. Coconut Lime is a double creamy white with a contrasting pale green cone. E. Pink Double Delight has fully double pompoms in bright pink, fading to a soft lavender-mauve. It is truly outstanding, as is its newest cousin, Pink Poodle, which is one of the most unique doubles with very frilly four-inch flowers with little cones showing. It’s just like a big pink fluffy poodle standing on 32-inch stems.

There are so many new varieties of echinaceas coming out each year, it’s hard to keep up. Many are very beautiful new cultivars, but they do not stand up well in winter or tend to rot away in heavy, wet soils. The old reliables are still some of the best for our region. Echinacea purpurea, Ruby Star and White Swan are great garden plants. Echinacea Magnus was the worldwide Perennial Plant of the Year in 1998.

Keep your eyes on this amazing garden and environmentally friendly plant family. It’s a great time to plant them, and you will enjoy them in your garden for many years to come. They blend well with so many other plants and are truly one of the stars in our summer gardens.

Brian Minter is a master gardener who operates Minter Gardens in Chilliwack.