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Why Are Fall Blooming Plants Important in a Garden?

October 4, 2023 by Andrew Walsh Leave a Comment

This year I’ve been trying to diversify my garden according to one crucial principle: the season when plants flower. Ensuring that there are blooms all months of the growing season is an important practice for multiple reasons.

From an aesthetic standpoint, having blooms at all times gives your garden more color and visual interest throughout the year.

Also, since many plants fade away after they flower, making sure you have late season plants as well will help you fill in gaps and maintain a balanced look in your garden.

And these principles also lead in to the ecological benefits of fall blooming plants.

What Wildlife and Pollinators Benefit from Fall Blooming Plants?

Fall-blooming plants provide nectar and pollen for bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. Many species of pollinators are still active in the fall, and having a source of food during this time is crucial for their survival.

One prominent example of this is the monarch butterfly, which migrates thousands of miles south to Mexico in the fall, a journey which requires a lot of energy in the form of nectar that fall-blooming plants provide.

In addition, the seeds and fruits produced by fall-blooming plants provide a food source for various wildlife species, including birds and small mammals.

Also, as climate change accelerates, the timing of seasons and flowering periods may shift. Fall-blooming plants can help bridge gaps in the availability of resources for pollinators and wildlife caused by these shifts in climate, contributing to ecosystem resilience.

Best Fall Blooming Native Plants to Add to Your Garden?

For many gardeners, the quintessential fall-blooming flower is the chrysanthemum, and although these undoubtedly add beauty and a showy splash of color, they don’t provide as much benefit for pollinators and other wildlife in your yard as native plants do.

The best fall-blooming plants for wildlife that you can grow in most ecoregions of the United States are asters and goldenrods.

Goldenrods and Asters: Great Keystone Plants for Fall Flowers

Asters and goldenrods are so beneficial that they are known as keystone plants. Keystone plants have a outsized impact on the ecosystem due to the complex interactions they have with a wide variety of species.

Specifically, they provide pollen for specialist bees which can only feed on certain plants. Pollinators also depend on these plants as food sources for their caterpillars, so goldenrods and asters not only support adult pollinators but also contribute to the lifecycle of various butterfly and moth species, further enhancing biodiversity.

It’s certainly true that you will see bees and butterflies on nonnative plants such as mums, so they do provide some benefit, but they will not be able to sustain the larger number of native bees that are specialists, and they also cannot feed the moth and butterfly caterpillars that are crucial for supporting the next generation of pollinators.

Goldenrods and asters are host plants for the larvae of numerous butterfly and moth species, such as the American lady butterfly and various species of skippers. In fact, according to the NWF, in the Eastern Temperate Forests ecoregion, 104 caterpillar species use solidago (goldenrod) as a host plant and 42 specialist bee species rely on it, while for symphyotrichum (aster) it is 100 caterpillar and 33 bee species. These are the highest totals for all flowering perennials (third place is helianthus – sunflowers).

There are a wide variety of both aster and goldenrod species, and another great thing is that several varieties are tolerant of quite a bit of shade so they are ideal for native shade gardens, which still support bees and other pollinators.

(It’s also worth emphasizing that although goldenrod often gets blamed for seasonal allergies, it is not the true culprit! Goldenrods are in fact not wind pollinated, and ragweed pollen is what actually causes those sneezes and stuffy noses.)

You can use a website like the National Wildlife Federation or Wildflower.org to find good aster and goldenrod species for your area.

Below I’ll show a few of the species I’m growing in my garden in Ohio Zone 6A.

Heartleaf / Blue Wood Aster (Symphyotrichum cordifolium) in shade garden
A bee getting nectar from the heartleaf aster
Aromatic Aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium) which has grown so much that it’s practically a hedge at the edge of our yard
Solidago sphacelata ‘Golden Fleece’, a compact cultivar of goldenrod that is only 1 to 1.5 feet tall
A pollinator visiting the dwarf goldenrod
New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae)

Filed Under: Gardening Theory Tagged With: Bees, Fall

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About This Website

I'm Andrew, a home gardener who got fully obsessed with native plants during the pandemic and I'm now sharing my progress and what I've learned. My interests include utilizing natives in formal as well as naturalized settings, and using native trees and shrubs to support wildlife.

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