Garden Centre

Monday, October 26, 2009

Asters or Michaelmas Daisies

I have Asters in my garden. Apparently you’re only supposed to call them Michaelmas Daisies if they are Aster novi-belgii which is news to me, as I thought the two terms were interchangeable!

It’s an old-fashioned flower, the aster, which means star from the shape of the petals, but it’s a great one for the autumn border if you don’t let the plant succumb to mildew. That means dividing clumps with a spade, discarding the old dormant sections from the centre every second year – this stops them getting overcrowded in the heart of the plant. It also means mulching to keep the moisture at the roots and spraying with a fungicide as soon as you see the first hint of mildew. I think the taller ones are less prone to the problem, perhaps because they are naturally more open, but they do tend to need staking.

I thought I’d taken all mine out, but two clumps have suddenly appeared, or reappeared, so perhaps they’ve come from seed. Anyway, I’m quite happy with them, although they are the bog-standard Michaelmas, not one of the more elegant forms, as they are filling in a gap left by a lobelia that got mown down by the dogs and never recovered and yet another grass that I’m going to take out as I’m just not keeping up with trimming off the seedheads and the garden is becoming a pampas as a result!

Labels: aster, autumn border, autumn colour, michaelmas daisy

The All Seasons Gardener at 10:03 AM

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