Gardening: Heliopsis — false sunflower — is stunning in gardens and in cut arrangements

I am a jealous gardener. I get jealous when I am out visiting a garden and I see a flowering plant that I have somehow missed incorporating into my landscape. 

Such is the case with false sunflower, Heliopsis helianthoides. Helios was the Greek sun god and that is just what these flowering perennials are. How I ever missed this late summer and autumn beauty is beyond me, but a recent trip to a local nursery yielded a stunning orange variety called Bleeding Hearts. Now comes the musical chairs-like relocation of existing plants that will be required to fit three of these beauties into my perennial beds.

Also known as ox-eye sunflowers, false sunflowers are easy-growing flowering perennials that naturalize in grasslands and at the edge of woodlands. They are a wildflower native to the eastern two-thirds of the United States.

The plants provide vibrant yellow, gold, and orange flowers, which are attractive to butterflies, hummingbirds and bees. With their autumn palette, false sunflowers also make excellent cut flowers in vases and arrangements.

Shrub-like plants

False sunflowers contain triangular-shaped leaves and branching stems that produce shrub-like plants up to three feet wide and up to five feet tall, making them excellent for the rear of the planting bed. Certain varieties may need staking late in the season.

The flowers are daisy-like with a cone-shaped golden-brown center disc. False sunflowers are clump-forming and tend to stay in one place in the planting bed, rather than spreading throughout the bed like other perennials such as black-eyed Susan.  After a few years, false sunflowers can be divided in early spring or fall to keep the center from dying out.

Sun gods require full sun

False sunflowers, like most sunflowers, thrive in full sun locations that receive a minimum of six to eight hours of full sun each day between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Although they will survive in locations that are shaded for several hours each day, the blooms will not be as large or numerous, and the plants may get more leggy in less-sunny locations.

False sunflowers will thrive in a variety of soil types including rocky and clay soils. Teh plants will tolerate dry conditions but will bloom best when provided with supplemental water during dry periods. They will thrive in soils with a pH. from 6.0 to 8.0.

Reliable late summer and fall color

False sunflower is a reliable repeat bloomer, providing new flowers from mid-summer until the first killing frost in October. Deadheading (removing spent blooms) will keep new flower buds forming and keep the plant looking fresh and neat. They can be pruned after a killing frost or late in the winter.

Other perennial color

Late summer is also a great time to plant some other flowering perennials that provide vibrant fall colors until the first killing frost. In addition to false sunflower, there are perennial sunflowers with equally lengthy blooms as well as several varieties of Rudbekia and asters. I find these late summer and autumn flowering perennials easier to establish and maintain that hardy mums that are so popular come Labor Day.

Mike Hogan is an associate professor at Ohio State University and an educator at the OSU Extension.

hogan.1@osu.edu