Hints and tips:
...Aster frikartii x Monch is an assured winner, lavender blue, long flowering and flopping prettily from July onwards. Tip number six? Get down on your hands and knees and hand-weed with a good trowel....
...I have the right plants ready and waiting: the late-flowering buddleias and verbenas, the proper type of buckthorn, asters galore and some thistly-headed centaureas....
...Even now in June, it is worth checking out the bedding on the Thompson & Morgan website....
...From a catalogue picture I chose Thompson & Morgan’s low-growing French marigold called Konstance, billed as flowering far into late autumn....
...I am growing a stock plant of Aster divaricatus, a tough blue summer-flowering aster from Central Asia, which I will split and space among Potentilla recta Warrenii, a good fresh yellow flowerer on stems...
...So will China asters, forms of Callistephus that are smuggled under the A-word in most seed lists....
..., listed on RHS Plantfinder under its new name Aster x herveyi) and lovely Aster thomsonii, most readily found in its smaller form, thomsonii Nanus....
...They are not there, however, when the dahlias and asters dominate. Perhaps the year should go gracefully to its end without the strong lines of early June and July....
International Edition