Amsonia
Tabernaemontana (Blue Star)
“The best-kept secret in autumn gardening. Modest blue flowers in summer, then weeks of luminous golden foliage that outperforms most trees. Barely known in Britain. That needs to change.”
— ROSIE
Rosie's Take
Amsonia is a two-act plant, and which act you prefer depends on what you value. In June, it produces clusters of small, star-shaped, pale steel-blue flowers — delicate, airy, and quietly lovely. Not shouting, not demanding attention, just contributing a cool blue to the early summer border in a way that most people walk past without registering. That's act one.
Act two arrives in October, and act two is the reason you grow it. The narrow, willow-like leaves turn the most extraordinary golden yellow — clear, bright, luminous, and lasting for weeks. Not the coppery-bronze of most autumn foliage, not the fleeting blaze-and-drop of Japanese maples. A sustained, clear, buttery gold that holds and holds, week after week, until the first hard frosts. It's the best autumn foliage colour of any herbaceous perennial I grow, and it's the act that earns standing ovations.
The plant forms a bushy, well-shaped clump about two and a half feet tall, with those narrow, elegant leaves densely clothing the stems. In summer, the foliage effect is similar to a well-behaved willow — graceful, fine-textured, architectural. It's one of those rare plants that looks intentional even when it's not doing anything particularly dramatic.
It's barely known in Britain. American gardeners have grown it for decades — it's native to the eastern United States — but it's still a rarity in British borders, which I find baffling. A plant with two seasons of interest, no pest or disease problems, no staking required, and autumn colour that outperforms most trees. I have a suspicion that its very modesty has held it back. The quiet performers always take longer to be noticed.
✿ From the folklore cabinet
Amsonia is named after Dr Charles Amson, an eighteenth-century Virginian physician. The specific name 'tabernaemontana' honours Jakob Theodor von Bergzabern — a sixteenth-century German herbalist who Latinised his name to Tabernaemontanus because his town name meant 'mountain tavern.' So the plant is named after a doctor and a man who renamed himself after a pub on a hill. The genus is native to the eastern United States, where it grows in damp woodland edges and meadows. It's a member of the dogbane family, and like many family members, the stems exude a milky latex when cut. In American gardening, amsonia has become a staple of the low-maintenance, four-season border. In Britain, it remains frustratingly obscure. Consider this my small campaign.
