Symphyotrichum novae-angliae, New England Aster

When Ontario roadsides and fields turn purple and gold in the fall, this Aster is the purple.

Loved by gardeners and pollinators alike, the blooms appear in in Late August or early September and continue to offer up bright colours, pollen and nectar for weeks.

Left to their own devices, in spaces that have bare patches of soil, these will self seed exuberantly, but I haven’t found individual plants to be prone to spreading at a noticeable rate once they reach a mature size of about 24 to 36” across.

Their height ranged between 30 and 48” in my gardens, although I’ve seen them get taller and floppier in rich soil and/or with irrigation. If they are planted without neighbours, they have a tendency to lean over as they come into full bloom, weighed down by the abundance of their own blossoms.

Like most plants that thrive outside of cultivation, these are happy to grow mixed in with other species that enjoy similar conditions -Goldenrod being an obvious physically, ecologically and aesthetically, supportive companion species. From a bloom time standpoint, I find that they overlap more closely with Late Goldenrod than with Canada Goldenrod (two nearly identical species, except for their blooming time).

They are perfectly happy in average to dry growing conditions and prefer full sun, or at least 6 hours per day, to set maximum bloom.

Hugely popular with pollinators in general, the patch of these in my postage-stamp urban front yard literally hums every fall, especially with bumble bees, a colony that is now into its seventh season and seeming to become more abundant each year.

These continue to feed wildlife into the winter, with finches and redpolls especially enjoying their seeds.

While deep purple is the most common shade, a certain degree of natural colour variation isn’t uncommon, ranging from very pale purple through to a rich, reddish pink in the patches I’ve had a chance to photograph.

In a sunny garden these are lovely companions for Anise Hyssop, Pink Swamp Milkweed, Flat topped White Aster, Lance-leaved Coreopsis, Common Sneezeweed, Button Blazing Star, Wild Bergamot, Hairy Beardtongue, Virginia Mountain Mint, Black-Eyed-Susan, Little Bluestem, Early, Grey-stem, Stiff and Wrinkle-leaf Goldenrods, Sky Blue and Smooth Blue Asters, Ohio Spiderwort and Culver’s root, among many others.

In a meadow setting, where rambunctiously spreading species might be more welcome, they also grow perfectly well alongside Grass-leaved, Canada and Late Goldenrods, Silver Wormwood, Common Milkweed, Showy-Tick-Trefoil, Prairie Sundrops, Switchgrass and Yellow False- Sorghum, as well as perennial Sunflowers of various types.