“Sunset” Coneflowers © 2011 Bo Mackison

A visit to one of my favorite gardens in Madison proved disappointing last night until I rounded the last corner of a small enclosure and found a patch of hybrid coneflowers. (The garden is under going major renovations and the atypical heat we have had has taken a toll on many of the summer gardening projects.)

I am not a fan of most of the purple coneflower hybrids, which are no longer purple, but instead they are white, yellow, orange. I don’t think I mind the change in color as much as the change in the prickly cone head center of the flower. Many of the hybrids have a flowery center and it seems they lack the character of the original prairie flower.

Most of these have not undergone much testing so the hardiness of the flowers is unknown. I thought the “Sunset” coneflower was one of the nicer varieties and still had the typical center. A bumblebee seems to like it fine, too.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is experimenting with a new photo techniques with the huge variety of flowers in bloom as her willing subjects.