I believe that every sunny flower garden should include purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea). For one thing, this tough perennial flower is hard to kill once it is established. My plants thrive during our droughts without any supplemental water.

Of course, it's gorgeous. What's not to like in a bold, daisylike flower that sports rosy-pink-to-purple petals drooping gracefully around a dark center that morphs into an orange cone over time? That cone is full of seeds, produced with the enthusiastic assistance of every pollinator you can name - honeybees, bumblebees, solitary bees, and many varieties of butterfly.

And if you don't like the pinks, lavenders and whites of the basic species, you can buy an astonishing array of impressive hybrids that sport colors ranging from yellows through oranges and reds.

The flowers look fabulous for weeks of hot summer sun, even weathering occasional thunderstorms. When the petals eventually fall, the massive seed cones add visual interest to the landscape - until the goldfinches find them. These canary-yellow birds descend on the cones in late summer, dissecting them with enthusiasm to reveal and devour what must be very tasty seeds.

A gardener with more fastidious tendencies might be dismayed by the havoc wrought upon the coneflowers by the finches. But I garden for the fauna as much as the flora. In return for providing a haven from the bulldozers, I am rewarded with a dynamic landscape of changing color and movement year round.

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