GARDENING: something so spectacular it’s worth the wait

THE late flowering asters form part of a rather slim group of plants that come into their own when the vast majority of their flowering cousins have finished, writes TOM ATTWOOD. Many asters spend the summer sitting quietly in the undergrowth with a highly unassuming presence until they begin to form their buds and their flower heads open to reveal a fantastically varied and broad range of colours, flower sizes and heights. In fact, many are so late they seem to never flower. We have a lovely compact aster growing in the entrance borders called A. Little Pink Beauty that is grindingly slow to open until October is well and truly under way but when it does something so spectacular it’s worth the wait. In isolation the flowers are effective but combined with all the autumn hues of their neighbouring garden plants and they take on a new dimension. For taller asters there are some lofty individuals who either need staking or at the very least, equally tall perennials to lean into. One of my favourite taller flowering asters with stunning gaudy pink-cerise pink flowers Vivienne Westwood would surely embrace is Aster novae-angliae Andenken An Alma Potschke. Not a name that exactly rolls off the tongue but one worth looking out for on your travels. As a side note the asters are in the daisy family, a truly gargantuan plant family and as a result the names of some of the genera are renamed and reclassified from time to time, and some asters are now not asters but symphyotrichum should you find some nurseries using that name instead. For a good mid-height aster I’m rather in love with aster divaricatus which is peppered in small white flowers but held aloft on delicate looking dark, shiny black stems that work so well planted with medium height ornamental grasses. If I could only grow one aster it would be A. frikartti Monch with its fabulous lavender blue flowers and intense yellow centres. Almost all asters need a sunny position and reasonably fertile soil.