Some years ago I bought some 'Darling Daisy' Shasta daisy plants from the local nursery, and put them into my garden. They turned out to be a GREAT garden plant; they never needed staking or support, and they were in bloom from spring well into fall.

Alas, a combination of irrigation issues and gophers (over a succession of years, some of which I was sidelined with surgeries and recovery) did for the daisies. I have been trying to reacquire them ever since, but the local nurseries no longer carry them (and cannot special order them), and I can't seem to find them for sale online, either.

Does anyone have a source for these? I would even consider seeds if anyone here grows it (yes, I know that the seeds won't come true, but they might produce something worthwhile).

Barring that, does anyone have any recommendations for a good dwarf Shasta daisy (no staking, long bloom time) which is commercially available and can be shipped to CA? I have seen various dwarf cultivars available online, but I really don't have a clue as to which ones will produce the very long bloom season that I want.

Thanks for any help.

Bluestone Perennials offers Snowcap and Tinkerbell. Both short. I have Tinkerbell. I love it

Thanks for that nursery name and for pointing out 'Tinkerbelle' - I hadn't heard of that one. According to their website, 'Tinkerbelle' is 8" high. Is that just the foliage, or is that the total height when the plant is in bloom? That'd really be pretty dwarf!

I dug up a thread on another forum, and they mentioned 'Snowcap', but one person said that it did not stay in bloom long for them, even with deadheading. How does it do in that respect for you?

(On that same thread, I did see good comments about 'Silver Princess', another relatively short one.)

It's looking like I may have to get at least one of each of these in the fall, to see how they do (height and bloom time) in my garden.

Tinkerbell blooms for about 4 weeks for me. Then just a bit more after dead heading.

You can check this proven winners website and just put in your zip code. They should tell you a place where you can buy them.

http://www.provenwinners.com/p...

This is a possibility.
http://www.greatgardenplants.c...

Thanks for the links, virginiarose.

I picked up an 'Angel Daisy' at Summerwinds last week (when I went there to take advantage of their 20% off rose sale). I only got one plant, and found a spot for it in my Moon Garden. We'll see how it does; if I like it, I may get more. (Of course, if I like it, I'll find that I can't get more! Lol!)

One thing that annoys me, though, is that in the past I have had bad luck buying Shasta daisies online. In two successive years, I have tried to buy replacement plants for my double Shasta daisy 'Ice Star'. (I had a wonderful huge clump by some rocks in the Moon Garden, and then something changed. Gophers? A change in irrigation? I can't keep it alive there now.)

From the first site, of the 3 or so 'Ice Star' plants which I ordered, only one of them had double flowers. The other two were TALL single Shasta daisies.

Of the 5-6 plants which I bought from another site this spring, NONE of them were 'Ice Star', and 3-4 of them ended up dying (2 of those due to a different irrigation issue which I thought had been fixed). The 2 survivors are medium tall (this year they are medium tall; who knows about next year?) single flowered plants.

I really wish that good, reputable nurseries such as White Flowered Farm (which has 'Ice Star') would ship Shasta daisies to CA!

How about seeds? Can you get seeds and grow your own?

Have you thought of using white Coneflowers? There are several different ones around, some are shorter than others. I have the PowWow White and they are about 24" but seem more vigorous.

http://www.greatgardenplants.c...

California does not allow anyone to ship a plant that is in soil into the state.

http://www.greenwoodnursery.co...

You will have to get bare root or seeds. However Greenwood Nursery will shake off the dirt and pack them special for Ca. but I think you need to add an additional handling fee. Go to the website and you can read about how they pack them.

quote:
'Orders shipping to the following states: AZ, CA, CO, ID, MT, NV, OR, UT, WA, and WY are subject to a 20% handling charge due to additional plant preparation and shipping surcharges.'end quote


Actually it is very nice of them to offer to do that so you can get the plants you want.

Regarding shipping into CA, I can tell you with assurance that yes, some nurseries do ship plants in soil to CA. (Whether it is legal or not is another matter.) I have received many potted-in-soil plants from several (non-CA) online nurseries, including those Shasta daisies that I was complaining about.

Funny that you should mention the 'PowWow White' Echinacea. While I was buying the roses and the 'Angel Daisy' this past week, I also picked up a single plant of the 'PowWow White' to try out in the Moon Garden.

I will take a look at Greenwood Nursery and see what they have wrt Shasta daisies. (I think that my last 'Ice Star' just died... sigh.) Thanks for the link and the info.

As for seeds... I have considered that. I bought some 'Silver Princess' seeds online, and I saved the last dead flower off my (probably dead) 'Ice Star'. (Alas, I did not think to save seeds from 'Darling Daisy' when I still had it.)

That is good. I am in the process of changing my corner garden into a small moon garden. I have three Whiteout Rose bushes and they are from the Knockout Series. These do not get as big as the double knockouts the very tallest I have seen them is two feet. They bloom repediately all summer and the Dwarf White Crape Myrtle. I purchased 12 fans of white daylilies or at least the nearest white I could find and when I got them they were tiny. LOL. They are not good bloomers anyway but I will come up with something else by next year because these will not bloom anytime soon.
I love Ice Star and was considering getting some because they remind me of a white coneflower coneflower called Milkshake only whiter.
I Just ordered some Dusty Miller, finally. I have not had any in years so I am very excited. I really hated the yellow flowers but I will just cut them off this time and use it for foliage only. Do you ever use Candytuft or Angel Trumpets?

I have Iberis (Candytuft) grouped around a sundial in the Moon Garden. It, Stachys 'Helen von Stein', and Bidens 'Peter's Gold Carpet' form a very casual intermittent sort of edging along the main garden pathway (not the stepping stones in and around the Moon Garden). I would use the Stachys in the Moon Garden itself, were it not used so much along the main pathway, and if it weren't for it's tendency to propagate so much and crowd other things out. (I confess that I also don't care that much for how mushy it is come late winter, and the clean up work I have to do to make it look respectable again.)

Right now the grey foliage in my Moon Garden comes from Dianthus and Cerastium.

I can't say that I ever cared for Angel Trumpets much... and aren't they poisonous? (I have a dog.)

I have heard of Knockout roses from my sister, who lives in Kansas. I'm not sure that I've ever seen any of them in the garden centers here. I currently have 'Marie Bugnet' in the Moon Garden, but I am considering moving it. I will be planting two 'Flower Carpet White' shrubs at the Moon Garden entrance this coming weekend (need garden help to move some irrigation heads). I have 'Flower Carpet Coral' along a narrow planting strip in my side yard, and it is colorful from spring into fall, so I am hoping for similar behavior from the white one. I also just took advantage of a recent online sale (now over) at www.heirloomroses.com, and have 'Saratoga' on order. (It is another white one, which I confess that I bought largely because of the name... we live in Saratoga, CA. It is supposed to be very fragrant, though.)

I forgot to mention re daylilies in the Moon Garden... Yes, they do not give a long season of bloom (not like a Pelargonium, for example). But I collect daylilies anyway, so the Moon Garden is a good place to put the near-white ones. Before the last of the daylilies has bloomed out, the white Dahlias have started blooming, so that's something. (And before the daylilies begin blooming, there are the white daffodils, followed by the white bearded irises.) Sometimes I get rebloom on some of the daylilies in late summer or early fall. I suppose I should take that into consideration when I work out which daylilies should go, and which ones I should replace them with. Rebloom is an iffy thing for me here, though.

Are shasta daisies short lived like echinacea? Perhaps not in warmer zones, but up here they seem to only be good for 3 or 4 years unless divided. I had a couple White Swan echinacea that just fizzled right at the 4 year mark. One of them must have dropped seed that last year, though, because now I have a large clump of purple echinacea. Ironically, I like the purple ones better in that spot.

I really like Ice Star Shasta Daisy, as well. I picked it up on a whim off the clearance rack when my local nursery went out of business ( ) and now I really love them. I should figure out how long I've had them and divide them so I don't loose them like I did the echinacea.

@Polymerous, how do you like the Flower Carpet Coral rose? I fell in love with the bloom color and plan to put some in my front walkway this fall. Do you have any favorite plant combinations with that coral color? I was originally looking at putting pink/fuschia shrub roses there so I have to rethink all my choices now that I just have to have that coral rose instead!

joann , I did not know echinacea was short lived. :(( .Congratulations on your free clump of purple echinacea! I do not have any carpet roses right now but it sounds like a good idea. I was thinking about a white clematis running on the ground, something with big flowers. .Any suggestions?

Polymerous , sounds like you have a much bigger garden than my little corner garden but I am committed to cramming it full and having something that will bloom most of the time. I have mostly white's out front but did not consider the different bloom times at first so I never had any type of moon effect. I am going to loose a few grasses this year, they have gotten huge and will add the white daylilies and I also have a white Iris I will put in there, I might get a couple more because I do love them and I saw a white rebloomer somewhere. I was considering some trailing white Lantana and Dusty Miller. I am on a waiting list for the 'Ice Star' but I already have plenty of PowWow White, my clump started out with 25 flowers this year from two last year and the same thing happened with the purple. I purchased one purple echinacea from Home Depot and planted it one year and the very next year it has 25 flowers, they seem very vigorous. I did divide the purple but it has been slow getting started and I am wishing I had not done that.

wickedelph... I like the 'Flower Carpet Coral' rose as a source of good landscape color. It has a long season of bloom (from some time in spring until some time maybe mid autumn; I have not kept records) and it is pretty carefree. The bloom color lightens as the blooms stay on the shrub, but they don't absolutely need deadheading (good for us neglectful gardeners) until the petals start dropping off (and maybe not even then... unless the shrub is right in your face).

My rose is in a narrow planting strip with one in-ground dayliily ('One Fine Day') and several potted daylilies. I scrounged through some of my photos to give you an idea that it does pair well with different colors - and also that the rose does look good even with faded flowers. (Sorry that things weren't cleaned up for the pix; these were really only for my own notes.)

Hem. 'One Fine Day' (click on picture to see the rose to the right)

ditto

Hem. 'Rocket Booster' with 'Flower Carpet Coral'

ditto

Hem. 'Sears Tower' (with carpenter bee) above 'Flower Carpet Coral'

last day of bloom 2012 on 'Sears Tower' (please excuse the hybridizing pods; click on photo and scroll down to see the rose)

Hem. 'Silver Rings' (marred bloom, badly Photoshopped, shown just for color (yes, some dried rose blooms that should have been pruned))

Hem. 'White Wolf' with 'Flower Carpet Coral'

virginiarose... Your clump of 'PowWow White' looks healthy, but I notice that you have it staked. Is that necessary? (One stalk of mine has already flopped over. )

Thank you, thank you, thank you, your pictures are very helpful!

I forgot the PowWow was staked. Almost all my plants 2 feet and over will flop when we have a heavy rain. If they flop real bad I get rid of them but I hear others say they just plant something closer to them. That does not work well here because if they do not get good air circulation then they will rot or develope some type of fungus.

Most people here prefer the real gardener pictures over the Photoshopped. We need to see what it looks like in real life so we can make an informed decision. There are plenty of hybridizer pics in database but almost no one goes by what they look like because we know they are touched up.

I really love the carpet roses and the daylilies, especially Sears Tower!

Pretty much any photo that I post will have at least some minimal Photo or Paintshopping, if only for cropping and sharpening. If there is obvious dirt or pollen spilled on a petal (or a hybridizing clip that I can paint out), I will clean that up, too. Sometimes the digital image color will be wrong on the bloom - either because the photo was taken in too much shade, or else due to the particular color of the bloom itself. In those cases, I will either color balance the entire image (basically lighten it up) to more closely approximate the color bloom (because the image taken in shade looks too dark), or else in rare instances I may have to mess with the hue. (In the past year or so, I have only had to do that with one lavender seedling of mine, which kept appearing too pink on the digital images.)

In the series of photos above, I may have lightened up the images with 'One Fine Day' (taken in early morning shade), and I touched up/out some white splotches on the sepals of 'Silver Rings'.

As I said, these photos were for myself.

Regarding 'Sears Tower'.... Yes, I am fond of that one too. Unfortunately for that clump, there are more than a dozen fans crammed into a 3 gallon or so pot. It is past time to put it out into the garden (deer or no deer), but I am not sure where. Right now I can enjoy the flowers up close, as the pot is right next to the walkway. In the garden, however, it is a back of the border (or, at least, second row back) plant, because of the scape height.

Regarding its traits.. It has nice clean dormant foliage. It does not have a long bloom season (most years here it begins bloom about July 1st, and ends bloom around August 1st), but the blooms are coming on when most other things here are almost finished, so it is valuable for extending my bloom season (I don't see much rebloom). I like the cheerful color. The blooms are large (but not giant) and always open well (we have cool nights so that is an issue). Iirc it is fragrant. I like the scape height (though it does not attain its registered height here; perhaps that is due to the pot culture?).

The downsides of it (you may have guessed one already) are that it has no rebloom, the bud count is very modest (around 14 iirc), and the scapes are weak enough that as the buds develop enough to get large and start blooming, the scapes also start leaning and need support. (I actually have to weigh one side of the pot down with a brick, otherwise the leaning scapes tend to pull it over!)

Still, despite its faults, I like it and will keep it around, and hopefully will find it a spot where it can thrive, and I can still enjoy it.

Thanks for your honesty! This is what I like about the forum, I can get information from an actual person that has been watching the plant for some time. I know the hybridizer might not have all the facts when they register the plant. Maryott's and myself too have found many daylilies that are listed as semi evergreen and they were very dormant.
I do try to stay away from the hard dormants because I do not think they will appreciate the heat here. Some have said they fizzle out after a couple of years. But sometimes I cannot resist the beautiful ones and even if it does die, I can at least enjoy it for a little while.
I do not have Photoshop but I do a lot of the same things you do with just my edit feature on Windows Live Photo Gallery. Once in a while I use the PIXLR. http://pixlr.com/express/ (this is fun to play with) LOL.

We are Zone 9 here (not sure if it is 9a or 9b). I have had 'Sears Tower' now for several years in that same pot, and it seems happy enough (despite being crowded, underfed, underwatered, and getting too much shade). I'm not sure how hot it gets for you there in SE Virginia (our average summer temperature is in the low to mid 80s, but we do have some days in the 90s); or, for that matter, how cold it gets for you in the winter (no snow on the ground here). 'Sears Tower' might do well for you.

I have to wonder if one thing that might be a deciding factor in North/South viability of daylilies is the combination of heat and humidity that you guys "in the South" get. I remember years ago trying to order something from White Flower Farm, and them trying to argue me out of it, saying that it would not do well here (i.e. promptly die). (I went through this routine with them for a couple of years.) They had at that point in time not yet come to understand that "Zone 9" in the WEST is not the same as "Zone 9" in the SOUTH. Lol. (Yes, I always got the plants from them (I had to agree that they would bear no responsibility if the plant died), and whatever plants they were, they always did fine here.))

Somewhat related to that, I am slowly coming to the conclusion that I will never get the performance from "Southern" daylilies here that the hybridizers claim, even though we are Zone 9. (Not to mention that such "Southern" daylilies all too often can not handle our frequently cool nights, which is a particular peeve of mine.) I am slowly beginning to see the wisdom in what Richard Norris says, about ignoring hybridizer hype and looking to see what does well in YOUR garden (and, if you are hybridizing, going from there). He (and certain other Northern hybridizers) are working for Northern rebloom, and I find my attention more and more drawn to such Northern (or MidWestern) hybridized daylilies. (It bothers me not at all that many of those daylilies are dormant; in fact, I think I prefer that they are dormant! Somehow the foliage usually looks nicer to me - at least early in the season.)

Somehow we have drifted far afield from dwarf Shasta daisies, lol!

I thought that I should mention that the 'Angel Daisy' is looking good in the Moon Garden thus far. While the plant is taller, and the flowers larger, than 'Darling Daisy', it does not require staking. I may pick up a plant or two more, if I ever make it to the nursery tomorrow. I hope that it will survive the garden, and I would be thrilled if it performs as well as 'Darling Daisy'.

The image below is from this afternoon; I'm afraid it is in sun so it is not the best picture that I could have taken. (And, of course, we are always fighting with weeds, as I will not use herbicides.) The one plant that I have is actually on the periphery of the Moon Garden. The Moon Garden Proper (as I think of it) is everything within a half-oval shape delineated by 'Three Rivers' stepping stones (chosen especially because they look good during the day, and stand out by moonlight, lol) and the house. The Moon Garden extends across that stepping stone path, but other colors begin to creep in at that periphery, especially behind the first layer of white-flowered things. (Actually, as per pictures in the Moon Garden thread, I do have some 'Neon Purple' Pelargonium in the Moon Garden Proper, but those are right at some steps, and I put them there because they go so well with the variegated licorice plant and the Heuchera 'Crème de Menthe'.)




Shown clockwise from 7 o'clock: 'Helichrysum petiolare' 'Limelight', Rosa 'Baby Ballerina' (this is a sprawling thug and is going to be moved to the back hillside, probably to be replaced with 'Flower Carpet Amber'), Hemerocallis 'Egyptian Queen' (overgrown and looking ratty, sigh), another 'Limelight', barely visible foliage of the bearded iris 'Arctic Express', 3 of a white flowered society garlic Tulbaghia violacea 'The Pearl' (only 2 are really visible; the 3rd is to the right, barely peeking into the image), and finally the Shasta Daisy 'Angel Daisy' in the middle. The pathway at the top of the image is the main garden pathway; the stones at the bottom of the image are 'Three Rivers' and delineate the Moon Garden Proper.

That looks real good! I love the Angel Daisy.

We have been in the 90's for the last three weeks, even before summer solstice we were in the 90's. LOL.
I do love the fresh look of the dormant daylilies, but I also got the look from the evergreens which were whacked off so they were forced to grow new foliage.