Upright stems bear its daisylike, 5″ wide flowers, which are a beautiful golden yellow with starkly contrasting dark button eyes. This low maintenance, worry-free plant tolerates drought and resists disease to return each year with an increasing number of cheery blooms. Among its top honours are the RHS Award of Garden Merit and the Perennial Plant Associations 1999 Perennial Plant of the Year.

this is at or near the top of every experts list of the best perennials of all. In fact, it won Perennial Plant of the Year in 1999. Developed in Germany, this is a hybrid of one of our native wildflowers, the Black-eyed Susan, and its one of the most useful perennials ever introduced.

As you may know, the common roadside Black-eyed Susan is named Rudbeckia hirta, and its a biennial. (We have the seed in our Wildflower Seed Section, and its a mainstay of wildflower mixtures. But its not dependably perennial.)

This is what prompted interest in the hardiest perennial species in the Rudbeckia group. (They look exactly alike) The tough native perennial Black Eyed Susan is R. fulgida, so this is the one a German hybridizer used to create the now-famous Goldsturm strain. (In German, Goldsturm means, literally, Gold Storm.)

Today, these tough, hardy, heavy-flowering plants light up our landscapes everywhere from backyard gardens to flower borders at gas stations and malls. This fantastic plant spreads slowly, is easy to divide when it grows large, and never fails with weeks and weeks of wonderful golden blooms. This is a classic perennial that every garden must have.