This plant was delivered to my door in August, 2008 as a dormant seedling from my darling Mum, gardener extraordinaire. I remember looking at it's shrivelled form, wondering if it had died of natural causes on it's journey or whether it suicided after discovering it was being delivered to a notorious brown thumb.
Sceptical, I nevertheless put it in the ground and coaxed and coddled following my mum's ministrations and to my enormous and ecstatic surprise, it listened. Not just listened it broke into song and did the can-can.
Gaillardia x grandiflora, I love you. My first, and hopefully not my last, gardening success.