When you go to Home Depot and see these lovely Purple Coneflowers, your first inclination is to buy them and plant them for all the butterflies and bees in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, these plants are filled with Neonicotinoids which are insecticides which would kill any visiting butterflies and bees.
While Home Depot does label these plants, the label is hidden behind the larger identification label. Most people would probably not even see the insecticide label.
I’d like to suggest that you not only don’t buy these type of plants, but that you contact Home Depot and tell them to stop selling these types of plants with insecticides.
In this post on the Home Depot website, they say that they will stop using neonics by the end of 2018.
Butterfly Gardening 
Thank you Tom for writing this post. I never would have known and yes I have bought those very flowers from Walmart and Lowes. Neither had labels but that doesn’t mean anything, I’ve bought flowers from these places without any kind of labeling just because I was familiar with the plant. All along I’ve been killing the very thing I’m trying to attract to my yard. Shame on them! I will be writing theses big box stores. Thanks again!
The best way to get plants your sure won’t have pesticides would be to buy from a native plant source.
I’m changing the subject here. I live in Louisville KY & haven’t seen a monarch yet this summer, on my swamp milkweed. I fear that all the storms that the US has had, has killed a lot of them.
I agree about buying from native plant sources when you can.
Don’t give up on the Monarchs – I’ve seen them the last three weeks here in St.Louis.
I don’t think it’s the ‘storms’ that have killed a hundred million Monarchs. It is Monsanto’s ’roundup’ sprayed on 200 million acres of US crops which have wiped out the Milkweed – their food plant. Add to that the neonics in almost every plant you buy from Lowes or Home Depot and you have a recipe for extinction.
Thank you!!!!!
Ami0c ami0c@aol.com
Thanks for the reply on the monarchs. I hope to see them soon.
I have purple cone flowers & haven’t bought any in a while, except for the native one. I get so many volunteers from the original plants, I just dig them up & move them around. They even come up in our gravel driveway.
I save the seeds from my best Echinacea and scatter them in the fall.