Coreopsis are a fantastic plant to grow at this time of year. Planted now, they will thrive in the summer sun – which, fingers crossed, should arrive at some point! Their love of the sun makes them super easy-care. Once planted, unless there’s a drought, they don’t need much watering at all.

At Awapuni we stock three different varieties of coreopsis. Two are available in our established plant range (individual plants in 1.2L bags) and one (sunburst) as seedlings.

All three varieties produce, bright, yellow, sunny flowers. Early sunrise has green leaves with golden-yellow, semi-double flowers. Rising sun produces double golden-yellow flowers with red eyes. And sunburst also produces golden-yellow, semi-double and double flowers.

All three make great borders and lovely cut flowers. 

Once you’ve got your plants, be sure to grow them in the sunniest spot in your garden around 40-50cm apart. Give them a light watering and then let them do their thing. When they start flowering be sure to deadhead (remove the dead flower heads) to encourage them to keep producing flowers.  And in late summer you can either leave them to do their thing or cut them back by one-third to get them flowering again.

Not all varieties of coreopsis are perennials. But all three varieties we stock are, so every two to three years in early spring you can dig up the plants, divide them and expand your garden.