I haven’t planted large marigolds since the Japanese Beetles showed up about a decade ago. Marigolds are one of their favorites, and they shred the flowers before I get any chance to enjoy them. Thankfully the beetle population has been leveling off in the last couple of years. In a fit of optimism about the beetles last winter, I decided to sprout a new marigold cultivar.
‘Garland Orange’ grows 36 to 42 inches tall with 3-to-4-inch flowers that appear on very long stems.
The plants produced those fluffy, orange flowers all summer long into fall. Some marigolds get top-heavy and split apart after rain storms, but ‘Garland Orange’ held it together. In late fall my backyard gets a lot more shade as the sun starts to hide behind the oaks and hickories. Only then did some of the stems of ‘Garland Orange’ start to droop a little. But the plants never split and they stayed green and healthy all season. Here’s how they looked at the end of September:
This is a great back-of-the-border annual. My only complaint is that I wish there was a gold or yellow version of this sturdy, long-blooming marigold.