Tennessee Smart Yards Native Plants
A comprehensive database of Tennessee native plants
Purple Coneflower
 Photo Courtesy Katie Walberg   |
Purple ConeflowerEchinacea purpureaFull sun preferred but will tolerate some shade, moderately wet to moderately dry soil, accepts most soils including clay, neutral pH. 3-5 ft. height, blooms in summer, purple flowers, re-seeds well.Germination Code: ANative Region: Lightly in Middle Tennessee and the Valley and Ridge province of eastern TennesseeBlooms for a long period and is a very attractive, dependable wildflower. Easy to grow. Attracts bees, a wide range of butterflies, and some moths including Sphinx moth. Larval food for some butterflies and moths. Goldfinches eat the seed.flower;sun;wet;clay |
Tennessee Smart Yards Native Plants 
These are my favorite flowers.
Looking forward to adding these to my butterfly garden 🦋
I absolute love cornflowers!
I love Coneflower and will enjoy planting my seeds.
I’ve always wanted to grow these flowers and am now beginning to get into Native plants. I have the perfect place for these flowers as a backdrop.
I have a lot of butterflies, bees and birds on my property and would love to provide a long period of food for our native creatures. I believe it will also add beauty to the front of the yard where there’s wild grass & weeds.
. Purple Cone Flower is one of my favorite flowers to attracted buttrrflies. It attracts a variety of butterflies and has lasting blooms all summer. Especially beautiful planted in mass.
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Coneflowers are great! They grow like weed once they are established, and the pollinators love them!
Coneflowers always add color to your garden. Purple is my favorite but lost mine in that really bad winter two years ago and just didn’t replace last year. I want to add this year. Looking forward to seeds
The beautiful purple flowers are ones I remember seeing in my grandmother’s garden growing up. She was, and still is, a fan of flowers that attract butterflies.
These will be amazing in our native wildflower meadow.
This is amazing and I’d love to add these to my house!
Do you have other natives seeds for sale? I haven’t been here long enough to know what’s native yet.
We don’t actually sell any seeds. Our website has a very nice list of places to buy seed, and you can check that list. Any plant in our database is in there because it is native to Tennessee and because the plants are available commercially (although sometimes a bit hard to find). If we can help you, please feel free to ask and we will do the best we can.
Love the coneflower. Such a magnet for butterflies and bees. Such a delightful part of any yard.
Love making your yard a wildflower field!
Using native plants makes sense and provides repeat seasons.
Tennessee coneflowers seed attracts birds
I want to plant these because not only beautiful but the bees will love them!! 🐝
I love having native plants in my gardens and I love the fact that coneflowers attract bees, birds and butterflies.
Coneflowers are beautiful and best of all… they come back year after year.
One of my favorite flowers
Purple coneflower plants draw in beautiful pollinators as well as bringing health and beauty into the garden space. In the winter – my goldfinches devour the seeds.
love coneflower in my butterfly garden! the goldfinches love it best in the fall–so leave the seedheads
I agree! I like to say that my purple coneflowers bloom twice. The first time they are rosy pink and the second time they are yellow (with the bright yellow goldfinches chowing down on the seed head).
What are common problems of the purple coneflower? At my last house, my purple coneflower had white fluff growing on the stems and over time, they became very stunted.
You got me with that question. I will check with my trusty horticultural friend and see what I learn. I have grown literally hundreds of them and never seen what you describe. I am almost wondering if you had two separate unrelated problems, one from insects and one from inadequate plant nutrition. I will let you know what I find out.
Hi, Nicole. I talked to my friend. He said there are two possibilities regarding the “white fluff.” One is an insect called a spittle bug which creates a white foamy material in which to lay its eggs. The other is either powdery mildew or downy mildew which can be quite heavy and appear like a white fluff. Mildew is a fungus which creates a layer that blocks out sunlight and can cause a plant to become stunted. It is usually due to poor air circulation and/or not enough sunlight. Purple coneflower is a sun-loving prairie plant which needs good air circulation. Without actually seeing your plants, the best guess is the latter explanation. He couldn’t think of any other options that might explain the problem.
Beautiful and medicinal.
Great flowers for bees and butterflies
I’ve been looking for a good source of wildflower seeds to sow and plant with students at my school. Purple Coneflower would be a great choice.
John D.T.
Native Plants for Tennessee is a terrific resource. Thank you for putting all this together. The vines section will settle long running arguments! We look forward to growing some coneflowers.
In my experience Purple Coneflower is the most resilient of all the colors of the Coneflower. The butterflies love this color. Easy to grown and maintain.
I have several plants in my yard but have never tried them by sowing the seed. These will be great in my pollinator garden!
I have the perfect sunny bank to plant & watch the purple cone flowers grow.
This plant is a personal favorite. Reliable year afternoon year, and great at naturally reseeding for new seedlings. I love studying the herbal use of the plant, and it is well known for its use in immunity support.
Food for Bees
Still my favorite flower! I wish I had a yard full of them.
Great pollinator. Planted a 9 acre pollinator field thru quail unlimited and the cone flower was in the mix along with downy sunflower and other warm season plants.
I have the sunset hued coneflowers planted on the east side of the yard. They make me smile when in bloom, seeing how these delights lure butterflies and bees. So the purple variety would be a nice addition to my flower garden. I’m planning on growing them around the base of the bird bath.
you can’t go wrong when growing purple coneflowers.
a very easy perennial to cultivate.
not to mention, i’ve read that this flower symbolizes strength.
We’ve successfully transplanted several mature pirple cone flower plants we’ve bought but never tried growing them from seeds. Are there any special tips that make growing them from seeds fool proof?
Purple coneflower is definitely one of the easier seeds to do. If you have a very sunny window or some plant lights, you can start the seed indoors in little plastic or peat pots around March 1. By May 1, you will have some nice healthy young plants to put outside. If you want to wait and plant the seed outdoors in late April, you will need to prepare the soil and remove any competing plants so the little seedlings get a good start. In the meantime, keep the seeds in a cool place. Hope this helps! Let me know how it goes.
Looking forward to adding some color to our yard and to attract some butterflies with the coneflowers!
AS A BLACK THUMB, I’M THINKING ABOUT TRYING MY HAND AT GARDENING AGAIN. WHEN I LAST GAVE IT A WHIRL, NOTHING SPROUTED SO I SWORE IT OFF FOR GOOD. NOW I’M WILLING TO MAKE ANOTHER ATTEMPT STARTING WITH PURPLE CONEFLOWER SEEDS SINCE I HEAR THEY ARE A PERFECT SEED FOR BEGINNERS.
I am new to gardening. I love these flowers and think that they would look lovely down the side of our shed.
I am new to gardening and I think that these lovely flowers would look great beside our shed
Looking forward to planting these in my garden, had a volunteer come up in my garden last summer was hoping to get some more. Thank you for this opportunity.
Beautiful addition to the native landscape. Grow natives!!!
I’m helping a friend with a native plant/permaculture project in east TN – these will be a perfect addition. Thank you! Where do I send address or pick up these seeds?
So excited to add these to my new garden in the side yard this year! Thank you so much!
What a great addition to our yard to attract butterflies, bees and goldfinches!
I would love to add more of these beauties to the landscape of my Maryville yard. Please send some my way! Also, I’m looking for information on Native Pond Plants. Where on the site can I find this?
Hi Cindy, we don’t have a designated place for pond plants specifically on our site, but if you use our search bar and put in “wet” it should bring up most of the plants that like wet conditions and you can find out more about them and which ones would work in ponds. Also, we have an advanced search tab that can help you be more specific in what you are searching for. It’s a little bit of a learning curve since we are a non profit and had to get creative with a free site, :) but it might yield more specific results. Have fun exploring!!!
Hi, Cindy. I was intrigued by your question and decided to see what I could turn up with a simple search of the database. Sometimes I am surprised by what I can get. So I just did a search using the word “pond” and it was quite productive. Of course, I also got tree species but most of the native plants that I know that work well in ponds came up.
I love the hummingbirds and and butterflies these attract. Were easy for me with my limited experience of growing flowers.
Beautiful
I have a large back and front yard that needs a pop of native color. The conscious will be the perfect addition.