Coreopsis ‘Roulette’

Coreopsis ‘Roulette’ is a Fleuroselect Novelty Award-Winning annual with funky, semi-double dark-red and gold flowers.

In most seed catalogs, the listed height for ‘Roulette’ is 24 to 30 inches tall. I trusted that advice and tucked my plants into the third row of one of my flowerbeds. They grew and grew all summer and then they grew some more. When they reached 57 inches, I stopped measuring. They looked pretty silly towering over their much-shorter neighbors. In fact they were the tallest plants in the flowerbed.

Crazy growth spurt aside, I fell in love with the zany flowers.

‘Roulette’ blooms later in the summer. Maybe a plant that really grows 24 inches tall would bloom sooner, but my Jack-in-the-Beanstalk-wannabe plants didn’t cough up any flowers until early August. That’s a long wait. And like cosmos and other coreopsis cultivars, you have to keep ‘Roulette’ deadheaded if you want the plants to keep making new flowers.

‘Roulette’ is easy to grow (and grow and grow), but I didn’t get a lot of bang for my buck. I’m tempted to give up on this cultivar, but those quirky flowers are so much fun!

I’m going to try ‘Roulette’ again next summer, but this time I’m going to stick my plants in the BACK of the flowerbed.