This time of the year when many of the spring-blooming plants are long done and the summer-blooming ones are fading out. You want a little more color to take you to frost and beyond, try fall-blooming aster plants. These plants are deer and rabbit resistant.
Try my favorite flower, the aster. Much tougher than mums, they will come back for many years. Many varieties growing from 1 to over 4 feet tall with a rounded growth shape. The colors are from white to pink and red to purple. If you pinch the stems back in June, you will get more buds.
Do not get these workhorses confused with the China aster or pompon aster. These are single to double flowers which bloom in the spring and again in the fall as annuals. China asters have bigger blooms but are much more delicate to grow.
The wild aster is a white flower blooming on roadsides and other places this time of the year. The word aster is Greek for star. There is a species native to most countries including this country. Queen Victoria planted them and Thomas Jefferson cultivated the China aster.