Growing Fleabane: Tips at a Glance
Sun lover fleabane is a dependable daisy that will add fairy-like flowers to the front of a border. Keep this perennial happy with well-drained soil, room to spread, and companion cottage garden plants such as lady's mantle and lamb's ear.
- Type Flowering ground cover
- Lifespan Perennial
- USDA Zones 3-10
- Light Sun or light shade
- Soil Well-drained
- Water Drought tolerant
- Companions Lilacs, roses
- Design Tip Grows in crannies
- Peak Season Spring to fall
Fleabane: A Field Guide
Dependable daisies are a secret weapon in any sunny cottage garden, and low-growing fleabane (Erigeron) falls squarely into that category. It will solve lots of problems, filling bare spots beneath shrubs and trees and edging paths with with small, starry flowers from late spring to autumn.
Fast growing (and eager to self-sow and spread in clumps) in temperate climates around the world, Erigeron is a genus of species that resembles asters (in fact, Erigerons are members of the Asteraceae family).
If you’re trying to choose between asters and fleabane daisies, keep in mind that asters are late-season bloomers and will come into their glory as other perennials fade. Fleabane will start blooming its head off to please you in late spring and, if you deadhead it, will continue flowering into autumn—but its peak seasons are spring and summer. (See more about asters in Asters: A Field Guide to Planting, Care & Design.)
Another word of caution: some fleabanes are invasive. Stick to better-behaved cultivars such as Erigeron ‘Wayne Roderick’ (a California native with lavender-blue daisies); E. glaucus ‘Sea Breeze’ (an evergreen perennial with yellow centers), and E. karvinskianus, an old standby with white and pinkish-white petals, known as Santa Barbara daisy in the US. See more ways to use fleabane in a landscape in Gardening 101: Fleabane.
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