Summer Daisies

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The daisies here made me smile when I saw them, with their wild and twisty petals and their cheerful yellow centres. My own garden is full of different daisies and this is one that I would consider adding. It’s a shasta daisy (Leucanthemum x superbum), loved by many gardeners and one of an ever-growing number of cultivars.

I don’t know what this particular cultivar is, since it is in someone else’s garden. There are several possiblities with similar petals, ‘Shaggy Gem’, ‘Old Court’ or ‘Beauté Nivelloise’. Another cultivar, named ‘Crazy Daisy’, often has more double flowers than you see here, with even twistier petals. ( However, I’m less keen on the more double-flowered forms and they’re less accessible to pollinators too.)

Leucanthemum cultivars can be variable when grown from seed, so they are usually propagated vegetatively. To grow one like this, it would best to look for a similar-looking individual plant rather than buying seeds. (Although seeds could be interesting if there was space to grow lots of different seedlings to see how they might turn out.)

There are already a couple of varieties of shasta daisy in our garden. We have the ‘normal’ white daisy with regular petals and a pale yellow cultivar called ‘Broadway Lights’, which gradually fades towards cream as the flowers mature. Recently I also planted the related wild oxeye daisy, Leucanthemum vulgare, in the hope that it will seed itself around a little. The quirky and very charming daisy in my photos would look right at home here. (And it’s good for wildlife too. Did you notice the silvery spider in the top photo and the tiny bee in the bottom photo?)