07/08/2026
The flower that travelled from China to the heart of the British cottage garden…
Each August, as they begin to bloom in my Yorkshire Wolds cutting garden, I find myself thinking of eighteenth-century chinoiserie fabrics… soft, painterly hues, delicate florals and an enduring fascination with the beauty of the East.
Although the fashion for chinoiserie was already sweeping through Britain, China Asters (Callistephus chinensis) arrived in Europe during the late eighteenth-century. Native to China and Korea, they soon found their way into British gardens, where they became treasured for flowering just as many summer blooms were beginning to fade.
Victorian gardeners couldn’t get enough of them. Plant breeders transformed the simple wild flower into the beautifully quilled, incurved and pompon blooms we adore today.
I love imagining the journey these flowers have taken… from the mountains and grasslands of East Asia to my own small cutting garden here in the Yorkshire Wolds.
Esther x
China asters | Callistephus chinensis | Botanical history | Plant history | Garden history | Horticultural history | Heritage flowers | Heritage gardening | Victorian horticulture | Georgian gardens | Chinoiserie | Eighteenth century | British flowers | Cottage garden flowers | Cutting garden | Seasonal flowers | Yorkshire Wolds | Yorkshire florist | Artisan florist | Locally grown flowers
