Is New England Aster deer resistant?

By the time this opens, in August, most of the bed has finished — rose-purple rays round an orange-yellow center, carried on stout stems with hairy, clasping leaves that deer tend to walk past.

The problem is always the same one: bare brown legs and mildewed lower foliage by the time the flowers arrive, on a plant that can reach seven feet. Crowding causes both. Give it room and moving air, then lift and divide the clump every few years, because an old congested crown is what produces thin leggy stems in the first place. Moist soil it likes. Moist still air it does not.

Where it is happy it is aggressive, so it belongs at the back of a large bed or in rough grass rather than anywhere fussy. Cut the whole thing to the ground once flowering is over.