Where her tears fell, asters grew

Small-flowered asters, with their quiet beauty and clouds of starry blooms, are the final shout of autumn, advises

- John Hoyland

THE lowering sun and shorter days are the first signs that autumn is gently creeping in. Trees and shrubs are straining to hold onto their foliage and the last of the unpicked apples are falling and rotting in the wet grass. The melancholy of the season is enlivened, however, by the final shout from boisterous dahlias, blazing orange rudbeckias and shimmering crocosmias. Joining the exuberance of this closing spectacle are pastel-coloured drifts of Michaelmas daisies, with a vigour and abundance that harks back to the benign days of early summer. The 19th-century poet Letitia Landon wrote of the way these daisies 'call past bloom to mind, to promise future spring'

The family is large and encompasses species from North America-stout plants with strongly coloured flowers-and low-growing forms that creep along rocky ledges in alpine areas. For many gardeners, it is the smallflowered species that is the most prized: long flowering and floriferous, with clouds of tiny star-like flowers that are full of nectar, offering a late banquet to bees and insects. The flowers are never more than half an inch wide, but produced in such profusion that the whole plant appears hung with blossom. Importantly, they shrug off the cold, wind and rain that arrive with a British autumn.