Brighten up your winter garden with the Calico Aster (Aster lateriflorus Horizontalis).  It brings a welcome burst of colour at this time of year with white flowers (well, bracts actually) with pink fluffy centres carried on long stems that shoot out from the centre of this compact little bush like fireworks. They don’t grow very large but they look so jaunty on the edge of the borders at Paxton House Gardens. Legend has it that these little flowers sprang up where the tears of Astraea, the Greek goddess of the stars, fell. They seem much too cheerful to us to have any association with tears.