The heleniums are a beautiful and bitter sweet example of the transition from natural wonder to garden treasure depending on where you live. For millennia man has brought the plants from his homeland wherever he went. We can trace the journeys of Roman soldiers with apples. We can also track the arrival and death of Europeans here in America by the roses they brought with them and planted on their graves. But when men had money that they could enjoy the luxury of reversing the process. In the early years of European expansion into America a trade began. John Tradescant the Younger visited what became Virginia and collected plants and seeds taking them back to his father’s nursery in Vauxhall, London. This beautiful continent was seen as a resource and a new source for exotic plants to decorate the gentry’s gardens in England. For a price of course.
A little later in the eighteenth century the land was being aggressively cleared of the indigenous people to make way for “God’s 
Own”, a simple wild flower that ranged across the North American continent up into Canada was sent across the seas as an exotic. The same year that the Royal Colonies of North and South Carolina were formed, 1729, this native beauty was shipped across the Atlantic to be admired as a curiosity. Like much of what poured into the greenhouses of Europe the original quickly became the new and innovative. Helenium autumnale went from being a beautiful wilderness flower and a medicine for the indigenous peoples to being described by The Gardeners’ Chronicle of 1878 as “Among the more showy herbaceous plants this is one of the best . . . it is at once effective and refined which cannot be said of all the yellow flowered composites.” Captured, transported, and now effective and refined, Henry Higgins would be proud. The sad fact is that what was a natural gift became an item of commerce. There is a link between colonization and the garden which is forgotten in our quest for the new and exotic.
Helenium autumnale is an effective and refined member of the perennial border. Through breeding gardeners have created different patterns and colorations in her petals, altered her height, but at heart she is still wild by nature. She will always be a spreader. One of those plants that likes to form a drift across the bed and though she now has many different colours I like her best in her original yellow. Yellow is a difficult colour to use in a mixed border. Get the colour balance wrong and it becomes garish. It can be cooled with the green and silver of foliage but to me one of the most effective combinations will always be blues or purples. Drifting another character from the Trojan wars, white Achillea, through the planting will soften the whole display and give some balance to the colours. In jewelry terms we would be talking sapphires, amethyst and gold.
Fully hardy they are late summer and autumn flowering hence the second half of their botanical name “autumnale”. This means that during the dog days of summer when other plants are less floriferous Helenium begins to shine. Even once the frost has killed them they hold up well giving architectural value especially when dusted with frost.
They are also excellent for the beginner gardener. Simple to grow all they require are basic soil. Some moisture even damp soils are best, though once established they show some drought tolerance, and average drainage is all they really require. Unlike other flowers in the garden they also don’t need heavy fertilizing, in fact it’s advised against since Helenium will become very tall and leggy. To produce the very best show plants can be cut back in early June to encourage branching and then dead heading after the first show to produce a second flush. They also benefit from being divided every 3 to 4 years to maintain the vigor of the clumps.
Helenium carries two common names. The first referring to the indigenous use of the plant is sneezeweed. The dried material was ground to powder and used rather like snuff for chest infections and colds. It’s European name however links it and it’s botanical name back to the cause of the Trojan war, Helen. The flowers common name is Helen’s flower and there is a myth which says that it was Helen of Troy’s tears which the flower sprang from. As this is a North American plant and only found itself in Europe in 1729 we can definitely put this down as a nice story but impossible.
Helen’s story starts, not with her but with three bickering goddesses. Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite were quarreling thanks to the goddess of discord and strife, Eris, giving them a golden apple marked “for the fairest”. As always happens when ladies fight everyone gets to hear about it and in the end Zeus charged the young and dashingly handsome Trojan prince Paris to decide who was to receive the prize. On Zeus’ part this was a genius move because no matter what the outcome it would be a mortal not a god who caught any resulting flack. In the end it was, unsurprisingly, the goddess of love, Aphrodite, whom Paris declared the winner and in return she caused the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen, to fall in love with him. The only problem was that Helen was already married to Menelaus the king of Sparta.
Paris was on a diplomatic mission to the court of Menelaus at the end of which Menelaus had to attend the funeral of his grandfather. While he was busy Paris and Helen ran back to Troy causing outrage across the Greek empire. It was Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, who decided something must be done and raising all the Greek heroes and their forces set out for Troy to bring the strumpet home. It took ten years but finally with the clever use of a wooden horse full of soldiers the walls of Troy fell and the war was over. Menelaus was obviously upset at his wife and vowed to drag her home for punishment in front of his people. The myth says that Helen was brought to her husband and falling to her knees tore her clothes to reveal her breasts and begged for her life, weeping the tears which became the Helenium. How could a man under the circumstances kill her and so she was forgiven and restored back to her place as queen.
That we can combine lead characters from the Trojan war harmoniously in our gardens is fun. Paris, Helen, Achilles amongst other can grow and throve together but there is a counterpoint which also needs to be remembered. In remembering Helen in the name of this plant Linnaeus essentially crossed out a much older heritage and series of names. We forget as plant hunters and gardeners that what is new and exotic to us has been treasured and used for centuries by other people. It’s with a deep regret that I can’t include any of the native names for it. They deserve to be remembered and used as well but search as I have I cannot find them. None of the ethnobotanical books on my shelf list those ancient, honorable names and so potentially we have lost beautiful stories and names only to replace them with one that doesn’t tie native land or plant to an appropriate story.
© Peter C. Simms and The Garden of Gods and Monsters, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Peter C. Simms and The Garden of Gods and Monsters with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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