You've found the famous Dave's Garden website! Join this friendly global community that shares tips and ideas for home and gardens, along with seeds and plants!
Check out the DG homepage for a brief overview of what you'll find in this gardening mega-site.
Login
If you don't have an account yet, visit the registration page to sign up.
Dear Sue, another fine article that brings back memories. We used to plant untold thousands of these in the many parks a beds all over the Borough.
I think they are underrated and the mere mention of the word "Daises," set most of the inquisitive public into a state of panic! I love the things, for they are very tough and will stand the usual amount of abusive that bedding gets in a public areas. The main Council Chamber had two small beds outside, this had to be done to absolute perfection as it also led to the Mayors office, so he walked past it a lot.
We used to get a cultivar that I cannot remember the name of, it was dwarf to what the other daises in the main parks were, and was underplanted with dwarf tulips. It used to look really lovely when in flower.
A lot of the public used to ask us what the lovely pink flowers were, and they would not believe they were in fact daises.
If as sometimes happened a bed got left a bit too long before it was cleared for the summer bedding, the daises sometimes had a habit of seeding themselves. Strangely not all cultivars did this, but some were prolific, which meant more work clearing tthe beds out. Little seedlings everywhere, which had to be got out, for as you say they can be a bit tenacious, so you don't really want them amongst the summer bedding.
I wish more people would use them as they are very easy and cheap to grow, and once people tried them they would love them like I do.
Kindest Regards.
Neil.
One of the 'vices' I like is the ability of cultivated daisies to hybridise with those in the lawn to produce an array of pink or pink fringed forms, thereby giving another reason not to bother trying to kill them from the lawn.
Who said a lawn had to be 100% grass, mown to within a mm of it's life.
Maybe when we get fed up of the all singing/all dancing pansy, we may get back to simpler, but still beautiful, daisies, wallflowers and forget me nots. Ah! nostalgia (and not costing an arm and a leg)
lortay, I do not consider that a 'vice', it is a pleasure to find someone that does not like things sprayed to death.
In one of the Gardens that was open to the public I worked in as Head Gardener, one person was employed to look after the lawns as they were massive. He did not worry about daises at all, he often with a long gardening knife, would get the dandelions out when they got too big!
Then the big Boss got a Garden Manager in who was in fact an Accountant, enough said. For he wanted to cut costs and labour, so he announced everything would be sprayed with chemicals, including the lawns. This was long before you had to have a F.E.P.A. license to spray these hideous things.
So everyone sprayed as they were told to do by him, not by me as I refused to do it.
You can imagine the result, as nobody knew how to spray or what the chemicals were, I did try to help by telling them not to spray near the ponds with Roundup etc.
He stepped in and organized everything, 14 days later nothing left!
I handed him my Resignation and left. He had killed the plants and the wildlife in one foul swoop, he, I heard later was then sacked when the big Boss came back as the cost to put it right was beyond belief.
Should have relied on Nature and left the lawns and everything else alone.
Regards.
Neil.
Hi, Neil, good story, I like the 'foul swoop' ha ha. We have daisies in as bedding here this year, so looking forward to an old fashioned display next spring.
