This month I want to highlight a late-blooming perennial, the aster. We have had asters in our garden for a while, but last ...
"This is the treacherous month when autumn days / With summer's voice come bearing summer's gifts. / Beguiled, the pale ...
Asters aren't the only fall flowers around, though, and mums (Chrysanthemum spp.), another iconic autumnal bloom from the ...
Technically speaking, the aster family is a botanical crazy quilt of composite bloomers (plants whose inflorescences contain ...
In a family full of showy blooms — black-eyed Susans, blazing stars, coneflowers, goldenrods, sunflowers and more — the asters rise to the top of the autumnal floral pageant. There are at ...
Bred in the 1980s for the cut-flower trade and commercially grown worldwide, Symphyotrichum pringlei ‘Monte Cassino’ is one of the few cultivars of the species. It is the familiar florists’ aster, ...
Much has been written about the value of including asters in your garden as a late-season source of food for pollinators. For this reason, I have included several in mine. However, there is one that ...
Beguiled, the pale down-trodden aster lifts / Her head and blooms again." — Helen Hunt Jackson Our native flora is on its last gasp. After a long spring, summer and fall full of the rich ...
Asters are a popular and dependable food source for Monarch butterflies, which rely on the nectar of late-season blooms to fuel their fall migration. There’s no lovelier sight than a bright ...