Future-perfect plant palette

My first smooth blue aster (Symphyotrichum laeve) has begun to bloom in front of the newly army-green garage wall, and it’s the first glimmer of an answer to a question I’ve carried in my mind the past few months: How will I like the smooth aster, for starters, but especially sharing space with my trusty ironweed? (Would the purples harmonize or clash?) I’m happy to report that this aster is one of the prettiest little things I’ve ever seen, each bloom about the size of a nickel. And I’m even happier with the combination — not just with the ironweed, but with everything that’s happening in that garage-wall bed. If I were to just point the camera at the bed and take a pic right now, it wouldn’t look like much, as these are all baby plants just finding their feet, and several of them with quite fine features. (Like how tiny the blooms are on the aster.) So it’s a sparse version of its future self. But seeing these plants in proximity to each other, it’s clear that when they all fill in, it will be quite beautiful.

And it will also evolve, as I expect the asters to continue blooming into fall as the grasses go straw-colored and the redbud above turns the same yellow as the aster’s eyes.

Even though it’s a little hard to show at the moment, I wanted to tell you about this plant list in time for fall planting, because this is a combo I highly recommend. (I’ll add pics in future.)

Let me know if you find this useful. And ofc these are all North American/Northeast native plants, with wide native ranges—

Wildflowers/forbs:
• Smooth blue aster (Symphyotrichum laeve)
• New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis)
• Common white yarrow (Achillea millefolium)
• and Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum) — too small to show up in these pics, but look out next year!

Grasses:
• Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum)
• Bottlebrush grass (Elymus hystrix)

Trees/conifers:
• Junipers (Juniperus spp.) ‘Taylor’ and ‘Gnom’
• Eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis)