The cooler weather doesn’t mean you have to settle for a duller garden – this beautiful flower blooms throughout autumn in a variety of colours and will encourage bees and butterflies to visit
Summer might be coming to a close but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to start planting – and this gorgeous flower thrives in autumn and will encourage bumble bees to keep buzzing about.
As the days begin to shorten and the weather cools, many of your outdoor plants will begin to shrivel away. This can leave your garden looking bare and otherwise lacklustre, especially if you’ve gotten used to looking at a fantastic display of summer blooms.
However, it is possible to find colourful flowers that thrive in the British autumn and which will continue to flourish even once the leaves begin to fall. According to the gardening experts from Country Living, asters tick all the boxes. They wrote: “Blooming from August until October or the first frost, asters provide late-season food for pollinators such as butterflies and bees.”
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Attracting pollinators later on in the year can come with a myriad of benefits for your garden. These helpful insects transfer pollen between flowers, ultimately enabling plant reproduction and the production of fruits and seeds.
They’re also a great way to brighten up your outdoor space. Country Living explained that these “daisy-like flowers” in a range of colours including blue, lavender, and bright pink, and “make a great addition to cutting gardens.”
Plus, they’re considered ‘perennials’, which means they will continue to bloom year after year without any need for replanting.
In terms of maintenance, they’re known to be rather hardy, cold-resistant plants, which generally require only occasional watering. Though, that said, if you are keeping asters in containers it is important to keep their compost moist.
Equally, it’s worth bearing in mind when planting them that they prefer free-draining soil and do not do well in dry or waterlogged soil. They are also unlikely to flower in deep shade.
Another key thing to remember if you are considering planting asters is that they benefit from being divided every three to four years. September is an ideal time for this task as the soil is still easy to work with and the flowers will have begun to slow their growth.
Dividing herbaceous perennials is a gardening technique where a single, mature plant is cut into two or more smaller plants, each containing its own roots and crown, and comes with multiple benefits.
These benefits include reducing overcrowding, cutting down on competition for nutrients and even helping rejuvenate older clumps which may be looking worse for wear.