I have had good luck with the Sombrero Salsa Red Coneflower for two years now, not long enough to really endorse it, but I do really like the bright red color and it was loaded with blooms this year. Still, it can't compete with the old purple coneflowers that just bloom and bloom for such a long period.
I have crape myrtles directly under my huge power lines, and so far they have never messed with them, but this year the things have grown like mad, so I wouldn't be surprised if when they come around trimming this year they don't cut them. They are inside my fence so that may be one thing that has protected them I think, I do have four or five outside the fence but only a couple of them have grown very tall.

I think the thing that upset me most was that obviously these guys were not "arborists" by any stretch of the imagination and should not have been hired to work in neighborhoods. They were simply tree cutters and should have been kept to clearing the big power lines that run up over uninhabited mountains etc. They could not tell an American flowering dogwood from a maple, that's for sure, or they would never have cut them down. Just the utility company trying to save money.

I've had nothing but disappointment with the "color" coneflowers...only the original purple does well for me and it reseeds and grows/blooms like mad here. This is too bad because wouldn't it be nifty to see big drifts of pink and white and orange, etc.?