Carol Klein reveals her favourite aster at Glebe Cottage
Asters are a perfect contrast to the glow of golds, yellow and oranges. Here’s my favourite...
In the garden here now, waves of rudbeckia and aster eclipse all the earlier excitements. The pinks, purples and magenta of July’s geraniums are forgotten. The first of the Michaelmas daisies provide complementary contrasts to the all-pervading glow from golds, yellows and oranges.
The asters of the moment at Glebe Cottage are those with clouds of small flowers, creating a blue haze in different parts of the garden. Most are close to species which means not only do they have a wild and wayward look that fits in with the feel of our garden, but they’re disease-free, which accords with our organic principles. The best of the lot is Aster cordifolius (symphyotrichum) ‘Little Carlow’. Its small daisies are so tightly packed, the leaves and stems are invisible. There’s a small seat on a brick platform surrounded by this plant, from where you can sit and watch insects gathering pollen and feasting on nectar. When the sun shines flowers are visited by newly hatched butterflies, red admirals, peacocks and tortoiseshells which feed on them until late in the day, when its clouds of blue flowers take on an extra intensity and depth of colour.
The common name for Aster cordifolius is wood aster, and it can still be found in the wild along the woodland edges of large parts of north-east USA. It makes it a perfect plant for shady areas where flowers are few and
far between at this time of year.
And it’s not just in the garden where Michaelmas daisies make their presence felt. Close to the railway when we drive past is a piece of waste ground, where, each year, clouds of white and blue take over. Across the narrow road is a row of cottages and almost certainly, long ago, someone who lived there cleared out these Michaelmas daisies from their plot and threw them onto the waste ground. I’m glad they did. Like so many ‘chuckouts’ they mingle with other plants in the no-man’s land between cultivation and the wild. Their clouds of dainty stars make the place magical.
It’s a lovely idea to think of a flower from the wild woods of the United States springing up beside a British railway line or in a little plot in the middle of Peterborough or Merthyr Tydfil.
I remember when I was little, huge patches of these daisies on old bomb-sites growing together with tall, bright yellow, black-centred helianthus. Such tenacious flowers – and so welcome. When you see their opportunism and will to live, you’re reminded of their origins on the prairies of North America. The ancestry of so many of the garden plants we cherish at this time of year is the same.
Accompanying our ‘Little Carlow’ are masses of helianthemums, helianthus and rudbeckias. In common with each other, they all belong to the daisy family, Asteraceae. The most predominant is Rudbeckia fulgida deamii. Large golden discs – their colour made all the more intense by black, velvety centres – open in huge abundance during early September and continue in succession until the end of October.
Given even a glimpse of sunshine, flower follows flower until the entire plant glows. At the height of its glory there are so many yellow daisies you can hardly see the leaves.
‘I remember when I was little, huge patches of these daisies growing on old bomb-sites’