In the Garden | As fresh as a daisy

They appear to thrive on minimum care, cope with many kinds of soil types and produce floral displays in both garden and for the vase.

Part of their charm is that one or another of this very large family will be in flower on almost every day of the year.

Federation daisies, which have given Australian gardeners decades of delightful bloom in a colour range from white through to red, are the result of a highly successful long-term program between the University of Sydney Plant Breeding Institute and Glenfield Nurseries.

Their brief was to select and breed superior forms of these marguerite daisies with emphasis on compact form; early flowering with an abundance of long lasting flowers; resistance to weather, fading and disease; and the ability to ‘self-clean’ (the production of new blooms on top of spent flowers, so that the bush always looks clean), a feature that varies between new selections.

The culling of plants to meet the criteria is rigorous.

From around 25,000 seedlings perhaps just a dozen will be selected for testing the following year.

It is a program that has received international acclaim.

Federation daisies are sold by the million throughout the USA and Europe as well as in Australia.

The everlasting daisy Bracteantha bracteata produces papery white, yellow, pink or orange flowers throughout spring and summer.

Yet another native daisy that offers value for money is Brachyscome with ground hugging yellow centered lilac flowers through spring and autumn. Cv, ‘Pacific Coast’ is a showy pink.

White Shasta Daisy and the colourful African daisy Osteospermum (‘Blue Eyed Beauty’ is a  favourite) offer more colour to the cottage garden and are best pruned in autumn.

One of the earliest to bloom in spring is the indispensable Erigeron – the seaside daisy, well used by Edna Walling, a well-respected Australian landscaper who made much use of the combination of silver birch trees , dry stone walls and Erigeron as a filler to soften hard edges and paving.

Gazanias have had an up and down kind of existence for the last few years, with those that seed too freely being adding to the noxious weed list in favour of a number of sterile species which remain freely available.

Drought-hardy once established, gazania produce most of their colourful flowers in spring and early summer while the accompanying silver and green foliage continues to look good for the rest of the year.