No 3 in our infinite series…

How did this beauty fall out of cultivaton ?

Those good people at Plant Heritage (I always liked the altogether more descriptive, if less succinct  ‘National Council for the Conservation of plants and Gardens’) run a conservation scheme aimed at bringing rare plants back into cultivaton.    Usually they are simply plants that have been “forgotten” in the tidal waves of new plant introductions that seem to engulf garden centres these days.

Aster Louise is one such “forgotten” plant which we’ve been growing for a couple of years now – and it really doesn’t deserve to have slipped below gardener’s radar.   It’s lovely late season colour (those in the picture are on our sales benches right now) very floriferous, and most importantly of all, seems completely mildew resistant.   It grows to maybe 18 inches tall, and planted now, each one will be an impresive 18 inch wide clump in the  border this time next year.  As a bonus, they’re wildlife friendly too – today they’ve been smothered in Comma butterflies making the most of the autumn sunshine.

You won’t find this beauty in many nurseries, but look out for it – sometimes the oldies are the best !

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 20th, 2009 at 19:45 and is filed under Plants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.