Rudbeckia hirta

Black-Eyed-Susan

• Average to Slightly Wet or Moderately Dry Soils
• Full Sun to Light Shade
• 30” tall, 10” to 24” spacing 
• Summer Blooms
• Ontario Native, Thrives in Meadow and Dry Meadow Ecosystems

While a true perennial species these colourful plants are relatively short lived, anywhere from two to, at the very most, five years but they will self seed if left to their own devices, so once you offer them a space, if they are happy, they will stay. They also fill the role of early successional species well, while other, slower to establish but longer lived species are filling in.

Individual plants can be quite small, only a few inches wide and growing a single stem of blossoms if they are seeded into meadows or other locations where everyone is all mixed together. If they don’t have neighbours, they’ll spread as wide as 18” and send up a whole bouquet of blossoms. In either case I’ve seen them grow to between 18” and 30” tall.

These seem untroubled by drought and, while they don’t mind a nice garden soil, they can get by just fine with dry, sandy silt. They do seem to enjoy their sunshine though. I wouldn’t ask them to grow anywhere with less than about 6 hours of direct sun.