Late summer bloomers are home gardener treasures. Just when the growing season is winding down, you see the value in perennials that spring to life in late summer. Such plants offer pollinators an essential nutritional boost, along with enhancing the landscape. Butterflies and other beneficial insects use the nectar from these plants to support migration, or egg production, for those remaining in Shepherdstown over the winter months.

Slender fragrant goldentop is one of those late summer beauties. While this West Virginia native is actually in the daisy family, this plant is commonly referred to as a goldenrod (solidago). The goldentop’s light green foliage is delicate in appearance, rivaling the loveliness of the clustered yellow flowers that gradually bloom from the flower’s stem. Bees, wasps, moths and beetles hold well-attended conventions atop this plant, when flowering. New plants develop from wandering rhizomes in an easily controlled manner.

Butterflies find the striking blue-violet rays surrounding a yellow center of the late purple aster flower most attractive as a nectar source. This native plant can reach three feet tall, but pinching the stems back several times before mid-July will help with controlling its loftiness. This wildflower is perfect for naturalizing in a dry-to-medium moisture rock garden with full sun — conditions where many other plants have difficulty thriving. This aster is beautifully paired with multicolored hardy lantana.

Before the winged jewels migrate, attract hummingbirds to your border beds with Mexican bush sage. This sage is noted for producing eye-catching, late-summer-to-frost blooms, of showy bicolor flowers. White petals whirl within longer-lasting purple sepals reminiscent of a whirling dervish. These flowers appear on arched spikes some three feet tall. This stunning yet low maintenance late bloomer is native to its namesake. Another common name for it, velvet sage, refers to its satiny foliage. Deer will sidestep.

Home gardeners should be enjoying the fruits of the summer season’s labor. Unfortunately, high temperatures and humid conditions often bring a premature end to the landscape’s beauty. Renew your garden’s vigor after a rain, by cutting back languishing Shasta daisies, blue sage and coreopsis. These plants will regenerate foliage and rebloom, as autumn approaches. Be sure to compost non-weedy plant foliage or place debris in out-of-sight water runoff or depression areas, for erosion control or fill-in.

Have a shrub that isn’t performing well? Plan now to move plants later in the fall, to a site with better suited conditions. Deadhead profusion-style zinnias for continued flowering and toss the spent flower head onto the soil. With a little ruffling, seeds may germinate next spring into an abundance of plants identical to this year’s crop.

Valuable garden advice is available online from Cooperative Extension helplines, along with university and garden center resources.

Kristi Hendricks is a graduate of Shepherd College and West Virginia University and a Master Gardener with the Virginia Cooperative Extension. She can be reached at belowthejames@yahoo.com.