Lovely and picks up the color in your flag, too!

Profile from overseas. Trophy icon means it has gotten their highest award. Participating suppliers numbering 65 = a strong commercial presence implying ongoing and widespread customer satisfaction. Helianthus 'Lemon Queen'|sunflower 'Lemon Queen'/RHS Gardening

Thank you, cyn427! I’m really enjoying having yellow in my gardens this year, and Lemon Queen’s blooms are such a pretty shade. I love how it looks with the dark pink of my Little Quick Fire hydrangeas, and yes, it does match my UMich flag wonderfully, Go Blue! (Go Green, too, we’re a house divided)

Embothrium, thank you for that information! I first learned about Lemon Queen on this forum, but was unable to find it at any of the plant nurseries near me. I remember reading that is was more widely available in Europe? I ended up ordering it from Perennial Farm Marketplace online. I can’t believe how much it’s grown this season!

We have had a stand of LQ for over ten years. In good years i.e. not too dry, it is wonderful, but this season it is labouring as we have been lacking rain for most of the summer and now almost Fall :(. (Bees love it).

Sigh, have lovingly tried LQ several times in various gardens. It may have won awards in the UK...but not in my part of it, that's for sure. This is one of the lovelier plants I plant, and promise to pay special attention to, irrigating and attempting to overcome the deficiencies of my location (along with phlox) every year. Naturally, I fail, so I am just going to vicariously enjoy your LQs from a distance.

Very beatiful! thanks for sharin. I am planting it next year.

@peren.all Zone 5a Ontario Canada

I like this combination. what is the plant in the front? Thanks

O helenium - another one on my list of fails. If it wasn't for autumn sages, I am certain I would be in a floral desert right now.

Thanks, all!!

Rouge, sorry LQ isn’t working out for you this year; I’m sure it’ll be back to its full glory next year.

Rosa, what are your locational deficiencies? I am spoiled with good soil and plenty of sun; I just plop most things in the ground and they tend to do well…it is certainly not due to any skill on my part, that’s for sure!

Gorgeous, peren!! That beauty looks huge…I can’t wait till mine matures, what a stunner!

Forever, thank you! Yes, give it a try, it is a wonderful plant and the bees love it!

forever_a_newbie_VA8 the plant in front is Helenium 'Loydster Wieck'. I really like the petal structure on this variety but it does blooms late. My favorite Helenium is H. 'Moerheim Beauty'. It starts blooming in June and just keeps on until autumn. The flower structure is looser and it is shorter but you get a lot of bang for your buck.

Thank you lovemycorgi z5b SE michigan. You will never regret planting it! You have a wonderful start on yours and they are quick to mature.

Sorry yours did not perform well this year rouge.

What a shame rosaprimula. We used to think of Britain as being a haven for all plants but now we know from posters like you and others that conditions within locations really vary.

I struggled to keep Sahin's Early helenium for a couple of years, peren.all, but it was never happy and declined. For the longest time, I desperately wanted prairie plants - I love those tall lush perennials such as coreopsis tripteris, silphium lacinata, vernonia crinita, rudbeckia 'Herbstonne' and, of course, Joe Pye Weed and sporobolis.I was always going off on flights of ridiculous fancy...from the mad antique rose craze through wildflowers and woodlands, fruit and vegetable growing, alpines, single genus collections (salvia, campanula, grasses)...on and on.

It is exhausting and ultimately unsatisfying - trying to battle nature - but luckily, there are many wonderful, interesting plants...for every situation and climate. It sounds completely obvious but it took me ages to get my head around the concept of 'right plant for the right place' because gardens are basically artifice and control ... so I really struggled to accept the limitations of climate. Anyway, I no longer have time, energy and £££ so a lot of decisions were taken out of my hands as many plants struggled through a season, never to be seen again.

But hey, I vaguely thought all Americans had huge gardens, picket fences, collections of maples, daylilies and hosta.. .while simultaneously being fully aware of the climatic extremes across a huge geographical area. Horticulture plays havoc with my ability to use rational thought.

What a cheerful plant!

To me, the flowers look like rosinweed (Silphium integrifolium), which I have and has been a stellar performer.

Has anyone growing the perennial Lemon Queen had any self sown seedlings? I'm interested because I read it's a hybrid of 2 perennial species, Helianthus tuberosus and Helianthus pauciflorus var. subrhomboideus. but I also saw it listed as Heliopsis? Just wondering if seedlings revert back to one of the parents. I'm surprised the RHS write up doesn't give specifics. They have 2 synonyms listed, Heliopsis helianthoides 'Limelight ' and Helianthus 'Limelight '? So which genus is it really in?

Helianthus Lemon Queen has seeded true for me. I have never seen any reversion at all over the years I have grown it.

So, is it Heliopsis peren.all ? Must be?

No Jay it is Helianthus Lemon Queen. It has an August bloom time and the flowers are that glorious paler clear yellow. Never bothered by aphids.

I also grow Heliopsis helianthoides Summer Sun. It is a coarser plant that blooms starting July 1st and for the last several years has been covered in red aphids. The blooms are almost school bus yellow.

Perenn.all that is interesting that the seedlings are like the parent? Does your LQ spread by rhyzomes like almost all the other perennial Helianthus species? Heliopsis just seems to grow larger clumps over time. I grow the straight native Heliopsis which also has school bus yellow flowers. It's vollunteers bloom the 1st year from seed. Thanks for the info!

rosaprimula, Completely understandable to go 'off on flights of fancy'!! LOL Gardening can be such a passion. There's very few areas of horticulture that I am not interested in either. Cactus and plants that eat flies? That might just be about it. But even with the restrictions of climate, that is what is also amazing about gardening, that there is always something else to turn your energy to.

I grow the dry loving sneezeweed, Helenium amarum. It's smaller and can reach a foot maybe. It loves dry, sandy soil and gets weedy along with the also dry loving Palafoxia callosa.

Peren, true, no aphids at all on helianthus Lemon Queen, but for the first time ever, my heliopsis Tuscan Sun are absolutely covered in those gross little red things. I haven’t had a problem with aphids until this year, ugh. I just keep blasting them with the hose, I am so disgusted by them!

@lovemycorgi z5b SE michigan, there are few perennials that have the flower power of TSun but I had to give away all of mine due to the yearly aphid infestation. No heliopsis for us :(.

Are the red aphids a native or invasive insect species?

Ah, I had a Texan friend who talked a lot about palafoxia...hearing it mentioned again is enough to send me off on a seed hunt. Oddly, the UK has a long history of horticultural imperialism but has never really embraced US natives with as much vigour as was spent on mysterious orientals. I think David Douglas and William Lobb were notable Victorian plant hunters who explored the potential of US and Canadian natives, but Farrer, Wilson, Forrest et al were much keener on China and the Himalayas. I had only ever come across amsonia tabernaemontana and had never heard of the much nicer a.hubrichtii. Always keen to be educated though...

Helenium amarum sounds familiar but I think I have only grown various named varieties and hoopesii (which did not survive long). Still on my search for late summer compositae (or asteraceae now, I s'pose). I have a distinct memory of growing something called cowpen daisy but can't recall how easy or successful it was.

Yes Jay H. LQ seeds totally true to the parent plant. Hmm the original clump is very gently rhizomatous. It is never aggressive and digs easily.

Yes clumps of Heliopsis just get larger every year and like you the seedlings flower the first year. It was trouble free for decades then I saw some about 30 miles away that were so covered in powdery mildew as to be almost unrecognizable. I wondered how long it would take to travel and 3 weeks later I had my answer. You can't stop something that is air born. The powdery mildew weakened the plants and the aphids moved on them. I still have unaffected specimens but I have been culling all the affected ones. I would have to run 300' of hose to blast them and I am on a well so out they go.

Jay there are 226 species of Uroleucon -red aphids worldwide. They are not easily IDed so likely both native and non.

rosaprimula yes indeed I think we have all had those flights of fancy! For me climate is the most limiting factor on plant choices. I admit I suffer the odd pang of zone envy but quickly pass on to plants I can grow. I have become enamored of a certain genus and want to acquire every one I can lay hands on, Sanguisorba being the main passion. Funny I grew Helenium 'Sahin's Early Flowerer' and had the same experience with it that you did.

Yes, prairiemoon there is always something else!

lovemycorgi I hope your aphids this year are a one-off! I will remain hopeful but it did not play out like that for me (or rouge apparently). They are gross. I am not squeamish but they are over the top disgusting!!

I have never seen red aphids on any of my plants but heliopsis. I had ripped out all of my rudbeckia goldsturm a couple of years ago and replaced it with tuscan sun. I love the long bloom time, but yeah, these aphids are disgusting!! I don’t think I’ll give up on tuscan sun just yet, but I’m certainly not planting any more.

Um, I acquire permanent greenish smears on every item of summer clothing, from enthusiastically squishing aphids with my fingers, then absent-mindedly wiping my skanky hands on my trousers or dress.

They do not "host alternate" according to this site Uroleucon. That has certainly been my experience. Apparently they go for Compositae in general, but only Heliopsis are affected for me as well and I grow other members.

This looks just like the native roadside one I dug up and planted. I loved it but it reseeded like crazy in just one season...so I ended up pulling it : (

Hmm the original clump is very gently rhizomatous. It is never aggressive

This is exactly my experience with LQ in the more than a decade we have had it.

(I always smile when I see a bee or two, on a cold September/October morning, all 'groggy' having 'slept' at the centre of a flower :))

I love that, rouge!!

My LQ is still going stong. At any given time, there are over a dozen bees buzzing around it, what a great plant!!