Evening Primrose - Oenothera missouriensis

Evening Primrose (Oenothera missouriensis) is a brilliant edging plant — low growing, easy to care for, and covered in large, saucer-like yellow flowers with soft, delicate petals. It’s a real hit with pollinators and also holds the RHS Award of Garden Merit for reliability and performance.

🌸 Flowering: June into the autumn

📏 Height: to 25cm

🌿Perennial

SOW: in spring, sow the seeds in pots or modules filled with seed compost. Scatter them on the surface and cover lightly with perlite or vermiculite. You can either put them in a cold frame, where they’ll take around 3 weeks to sprout, or keep them warmer at about 21°C, which speeds things up to 1–2 weeks.

GROW: when the seedlings are big enough to handle, pot them on from the modules. Eventually, plant them out in a sunny spot. The first year they’ll mostly grow and settle in, and you’ll get flowers from the second year onwards.

ENJOY: bees and other POLLINATORS love it, and the EDIBLEflowers make a cheerful addition to salads — a great choice for the veg plot or the front of a sunny border.