Estate Gardens' Quiet Fall Workhorse

Late summer into fall, the flower doing the heaviest lifting in the country's best-kept grounds is easy to miss at first glance. Japanese anemones arrive looking almost too delicate for the job — thin stems, papery blooms — but once established in a border, they hold their ground season after season with little fuss from the crew that tends them. It is the kind of plant a good estate garden relies on precisely because it asks so little: no coddling, no replanting, just steady color when most everything else has finished for the year. Landscape professionals who work these properties count it among the most dependable performers they plant.

With reporting from Veranda.