Aster season is coming to an finish right here in Zone 5, however don’t minimize down these drying stalks simply but, says John Magee. A backyard designer primarily based in Middleburg, Va., John is a frontrunner of the native plant landscaping motion within the northern Virginia and Washington, D.C, space. These withered aster flowers, John factors out, are filled with nutritious seeds that may assist feed the birds of their fall migration, and certainly via the winter. What’s extra, the seeds the birds don’t eat are prone to sprout into volunteer seedlings that may enrich the remainder of your backyard.
I bought to know John via The Native Plant Podcast, the award-winning program about native flora that he helps to provide. John, like me, skilled in decorative horticulture again when sometimes solely unique vegetation had been thought-about worthy of cultivation. Nonetheless, within the early Nineteen Nineties, the naturalists at a close-by nature sanctuary rejected his donation of a plant he had grown, a showy however invasive purple loosestrife, and his eyes had been opened to what he had been lacking. His curiosity in native vegetation was uncommon on the time amongst horticulturists. It became a ardour, and ultimately, in 2010, this expressed itself in him establishing Magee Design, a agency that does one million {dollars} of enterprise a 12 months now in designing and putting in native-based landscapes.
I turned to John a few weeks in the past after I wished to know extra concerning the position that our native asters can play within the backyard.
“Indisputably,” John stated, “they’re actually the showstoppers of the autumn backyard.”
Partly, that has to do with their variety. Once I consider asters, I at all times give attention to the New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae). One of the crucial spectacular members of this group, this species can attain a peak of 6 ft, bearing large bunches of deep violet to lavender-pink flowers. John agreed that this makes an excellent accent for the autumn perennial backyard. But for John, what got here to thoughts first was the heath aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides), a lower-growing (1-3 ft tall), white bloomer that spreads by rhizomes to make dense, floriferous patches.
The range of the asters — there are some 150 species native to North America — signifies that there are members which can be tailored to virtually any situations you can find in your panorama. New England asters, for instance, want wealthy, moist soils although they tolerate any besides the driest sands and can thrive in full solar to gentle shade. The heath aster, in distinction, calls for full solar however will flourish not solely on well-drained loams but in addition on the doughtiest sand and gravel soils. The white wooden aster (Eurybia divaricata), a late-summer-to-early-fall bloomer with white flowers, grows to a peak of two to 4 ft in partial shade to shade and is pretty detached to soil sort, adapting effectively to clays, loams and sands. John recommends this final species as comparatively foolproof, an excellent plant for novice gardeners.
A shorter species John favors for its good-looking heart-shaped leaves, the appropriately named large leaf aster (Eurybia macrophylla), tops out at 1 to 2 ft, making a helpful floor cowl for partial shade to shade and is notably drought tolerant. He additionally vegetation a whole lot of the blue wooden aster (Symphyotrichum cordifolium), which bears gentle blue flowers in full solar to partial shade, and calico aster (Symphiotrichum laterifolium) “Girl in Black,” which has white flowers with rose-red facilities and purplish-black foliage.
Asters present meals not just for migrating birds but in addition nectar for migrating monarch butterflies and different late season native bugs.
Just like the autumn season itself, the great thing about the aster flowers is heightened by the sense of time passing. There are many late summer time perennials, John notes, like goldenrods, however “while you begin moving into the asters, that’s when you realize it’s time to start out cleansing up the backyard, it’s time to start out placing the pots away, it’s time to start out preparing for winter. And so whereas I welcome that second of the 12 months when we have now asters, it’s additionally a second of disappointment.” However then comes winter, a season John loves, and a time when the aster stems add construction to the dormant backyard and supply refuges for overwintering bugs.
Thomas Christopher is a volunteer at Berkshire Botanical Backyard and is the creator or co-author of greater than a dozen books. His companion broadcast to this column, Rising Greener, streams on WESUFM.org, Pacifica Radio and NPR and is accessible at berkshirebotanical.org/growinggreener.
