We do love our asters here in New England and right now you’d be hard pressed to find a roadside where they weren’t blooming. As if thousands of native asters along our roads weren’t enough, we also grow cultivars in our parks and gardens. I found the example in the above photo in a local children’s park. I don’t know its name but it was a beautiful thing and very big; probably 5 feet across and covered with blue and purple flowers..
Annual fleabane (Erigeron annuus) is an easy flower to ignore and I’m often guilty of doing so, maybe because it’s so common and I see it everywhere all through the summer, from June to October.
At this time of year it would be easy to mistake annual fleabane for an aster if the fleabanes didn’t start blooming so much earlier. There’s also the fact that they just don’t have the “aster look” when you see the entire plant. There can sometimes be 40-50 small, half inch flowers blooming at the same time.
In spite of the dryness bluestem goldenrod (Solidago caesia) is having a good year, but I can’t find a single plant with a blue stem. That’s probably because a very thin wax coating is what makes the stems blue, and the wax can melt in hot weather. I’ve seen the same thing happen to blue gray hosta leaves, which are also covered with a wax coating.
Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis) still blooms on the banks of the Ashuelot River. Its common name comes from the way the leaves contain a natural soap called sapronin. When the leaves are crushed and scrubbed together in water a soapy lather forms. In the past this plant was used for washing clothes and making soap. It hails from Europe and though it is used medicinally it is considered toxic. It was originally introduced as a garden plant and promptly escaped.
When I see a rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) I always think of my time spent as a gardener in Florida. I worked in the gardens of a large hotel and the job included trimming what seemed like miles of tropical hibiscus hedges (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis) and rose of Sharon is a kind of hardy hibiscus in the same family as the tropical hibiscus. The hardy version shown here has large trumpet shape blossoms in early fall.
Knapweed (Centaurea maculosa) is still blooming but this year the blossoms are very light colored, while last year the plants in this spot had much darker blossoms. I wish I knew what determined what shade of a certain color a flower will be. Asters alone must come in every shade of purple known to man and knapweed appears to run a close second.
I saw this beautiful pink rose unfurling in a local park. It might have been the last rose of summer or the first rose of fall. I was disappointed by its lack of scent. Plant breeders often sacrifice scent in favor of color and / or size. After growing up with a yard full of heavenly scented Rosa rugosa it’s a practice that I’ve never been completely in favor of.
This daisy like flower also blooms in a local park and did so last year even when snow was falling. It looks like a Shasta daisy on steroids, growing two feet tall with tough leathery leaves that looked much like Shasta daisy leaves. After a little research I think it might be a Montauk daisy (Nipponanthemum nipponicum,) also called Nippon daisy, which tells me that it must be from Japan. Last year it was blooming beautifully after a 28 °F night, so it’s certainly cold hardy.
Nothing says fall quite like phlox, and I see a lot of them. Most of the plants I see are in gardens but I think the one pictured is Phlox paniculata, which is native to the eastern United States. Native Americans used many species of phlox medicinally and they were among the first wildflowers in the United States to be collected and exported back to Europe, where they became very popular.
I found this gazania at our local college. Gazanias are natives of South Africa and like heat and sunshine, which they’ve had plenty of here this summer. They are also drought tolerant, which was another plus this summer. I don’t know this one’s name but it was a bright, cheery plant.
I don’t really know why but I always look for the darkest flower in a group. I suppose one reason might be because darker colors are often more intense, as this deep purple New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) shows. It’s very beautiful and for me, in the world of daisy like flowers, this one approaches perfection. It was very easy for me to lose myself in it for a while.
What a desolate place would be a world without a flower! It would be a face without a smile, a feast without a welcome. Are not flowers the stars of the earth, and are not our stars the flowers of the heaven? ~ A.J. Balfour
Thanks for stopping in.
New Hampshire Garden Solutions 
Loving your closing quotation too
Thank you Ben, I like that one too. It’s very true, I think.
A lovely way to view things.
That gazania is magnificent.
I agree!
I love the little Annual Fleabane! In fact I like all the erigeron daisies and have recently bought a couple of Erigeron karvinskianus (Mexican Fleabane) in the hope that they will self-seed round our garden. They do seem to flower and flower right up until the frosts. Richard grew Gazanias this year and they were, and still are fantastic. In a dull summer they are not at their best so we take quite a chance in trying to grow them. The one you saw at the college is a beauty.
Thank you Clare. I had to look up the Mexican fleabane. I’ve never heard of it but I like it, as I do all fleabanes.
I was going to go back to the college for more Gazania photos but we’ve had drizzle all weekend and I thought they might have closed up. I’ll have to try again but I don’t feel to bad about it because we need the rain, even if the Gazanias don’t.
We have had a lot of rain this weekend too and I’m not sorry as the pond is very low indeed and I worry about how the fish are surviving. I also needed a break from working in the garden!
I’m glad your pond is getting some much needed water. Many of our smaller ones have dried up, which is a real problem if they’re used as water sources by the fire fighters.
I love an occasional rainy day. It’s such a good time to open a book or listen to some favorite music. I spent most of my weekend lichen hunting but I also got to read a little and even heard some music.
Sounds like a good weekend.
It was!
Your flowers are staying much longer than they are here. About all I’ve seen are knapweed and a very few asters.
We have mostly asters and goldenrod but I still see black eyed Susans, sweet everlasting and a few others. We haven’t had a frost yet but our average date is Sept. 15th, so they’re all living on borrowed time.
With all those asters and goldenrod around you must have a lot of very happy bees. Amelia
Yes, but the daily temperatures are getting cooler so they’re slowing down.
I remember asters from back east, especially the purple ones. They are very beautiful. All the photos are outstanding, but that last one of the aster is quite beautiful.
We have a Rose of Sharon here too. The deer would not leave it alone, and I finally moved it behind the deer fencing of the pinot noir vineyard, where it is now flourishing. We mostly see black-tailed deer where we are, some elk.
Thanks very much Lavinia. I’m surprised you don’t have asters there. Maybe the natives haven’t made it that far yet but I would think commercial growers would be interested in growing them.
I didn’t know that deer liked rose of Sharon, but I’m glad you found an easy solution to the problem. Where deer are concerned there aren’t usually any solutions!
Thanks for reminding me that even though summer is over, there are still some beautiful flowers out there, especially since we have not had a frost yet.
You’re welcome. I hope you’ll get to see all of the flowers in your neck of the woods before we do have a frost.
I think that first aster may be S. oblongifolius – Aromatic Aster. It has a good blue color and is relatively compact.
Thank you, I wondered that when I saw it on your blog. It’s a beautiful plant.
Although they are quite ‘unnatural’ in our part of the world, I like gazanias a lot. Your one was very striking indeed.
I thought the gazania was a beauty too. Since they’re from South Africa I guess they could be considered unnatural just about everywhere.
I was a little surprised to see so many garden flowers in one of your posts, but I’ll bet that you’re running out of wildflowers this time of year. I was out today, and even the goldenrod is done flowering here, just a few asters, dandelions, and chicory left.
That’s not a complaint, just an observation. I loved all the flowers, especially the gazania, which I had never heard of before.
Like you, I think that all roses should have a scent, or it’s not really a rose. I used to grow floribunda roses, which were heavily scented, then through in a few hybrid teas for show.
Thank Jerry, you guessed it! Though I’m actually still seeing a few wildflowers they are mostly asters and goldenrods so I usually use garden flowers as “fillers” in these late season posts. I love them all no matter where they grow but it seems kind of foolish to use garden flowers in the summer when I’m up to my eyeballs in wildflowers.
I’m going to have to go back to the college and get some more shots of their gazanias, which everyone seems to like. They come in some amazing colors!
From what you’ve said about your garden over the years it sounds like a great one. I wish you still had it and could show it on your blog. Since I was a gardener by trade I never had a sensational garden here so I enjoy seeing the gardens of others.
That gazania is stunning! This was probably the perfect summer for it to really shine. The flowers of fall are certainly beautiful, I just wish they didn’t lead to winter!
Thanks Laura! They had a lot of different gazanias there and they were all amazingly colorful.
I agree, winter takes something away from the fall flowers.
Beautiful flowers. The gazania is such a lovely looking flower and I really like the asters, we always had many of them in the garden. Lack of scent in roses is always disappointing, no matter how beautiful they look.
Thank you. There were may different colored gazanias there that day and they were all as colorful as this one.
I suppose in a formal rose garden scentless roses might find a place but I wouldn’t use them where people could get close enough to smell them.
As always enjoyed it a great deal. I agree that roses should be scented. I (try to) grow David Austins up here on the edge of the White Mountains.with limited success. But the Rosa rugosa shows the fancy hybrids how it should be done, and perfumes the yard for months..
Thank you Cat. I agree! Rosa rugosa is the only rose my mother grew and I’ll never forget their perfume.
I loved your two final flowers and quite agree with you about scentless roses, what do the breeders think that they are doing!
Thank you Susan. Sometimes scent is sacrificed for greater pest resistance or stronger stems and I can understand that, but as a consumer I’ll still pass on scentless roses.