Christchurch
Mary Lovell-Smith’s marguerite daisies
When we bought the 2.4 hectare market garden on the hills above the estuary in Redcliffs in 1988, it had had marguerite daisies growing on it since the early 1900s.
We fell in love with it on our first visit that fine spring morn. We trooped up the long, steep goat track. Below, the sun was sparkling on water and all around us, on the slopes as far as the eye could see, were rows of bright green bushes adorned with pretty white, pink and yellow daisies.
A wiry old man with braces and a felt hat greeted us, his arms heavy with bunches of flowers. Lester Harneiss had been growing daisies there since 1949, first as an employee then after he bought the business. Not long before we met, Lester had still been carting the flowers down the narrow track in a sled towed by a donkey. We were to use that same sled, albeit human-powered, for many more years.
“Daisies have always been regarded as old-fashioned,” he told us, “but it never affected their popularity.”
As we were to learn, their popularity was enduring at the bottom end of the market.
In summer it was not worth picking them; but in winter, when flowers were expensive to grow in glasshouses and to import, our outdoor daisies came into their own, thriving on the generally frost-free and dry hills. Those coastal hills were probably the closest we could get to the daisies’ homelands of Madeira and the
Canary Islands. “It’s one of the few areas in New Zealand where you can grow them in winter,“Lester told us. “Much of the North Island is either too warm or too wet.“
In 1913 Charles Burgess was the first person to grow cut flowers commercially there. When we took over the block of land below his on Moncks Spur 70-odd years later, his son Graham was still cultivating the land. For years, until demand for housing in the 1980s gobbled up the lower slopes, the district supplied most of New Zealand’s winter cut flowers. Anemones, violets, chrysanthemums, ranunculi, roses and gladioli were all popular, said Lester.
We grew imported irises, anemones and ranunculi in winter, and statice, bells of Ireland and myriad other summer crops – but the daisies remained our bread and butter. The quintessential daisy has, of course, a yellow centre with a single row of gleaming white petals. This form still grows wild on the hills of Sumner and Redcliffs, as it has for generations.
At The Daisies (as we named it), however, things had moved on.
Lester and his predecessor had bred a multitude of different forms and colours. ’Mary Wootton’, a pale pink double with a pincushion centre, was named for the locally-born Miss New Zealand 1947. An unnamed deeper red version we dubbed ’Bloody Mary’. A double sport of another variety, with a particularly pretty orange and cream centre we somewhat verbosely called ’Arctic Sunrise over the Estuary’. A mid-pink which came in both single and double form we named ’Lester Pink’ – for he had bred it himself and was particularly fond of it. ’Rosy Whites’ were my favourite, a double white variety with a deep pink centre. All up, more than 15 variations grew, but alack, when we eventually sold the property in 2000, all the cuttings we took were destroyed by a pet sheep. Should anybody have any bushes of double or interesting colours, I would love a cutting for my own garden, which is about to undergo a post-quake renaissance.
Marguerite daisies ( Argyranthemum frutescens) are a small shrub, seldom growing more than 1m x 1m.
They are easily grown in a sunny spot in well-drained soil. They are quite tolerant of drought and poor soil – as their ability to grow in any nook or cranny on the hills of Sumner and environs shows. As we learnt to our cost, however, a heavy frost can damage the buds, turning them black and any petals opaque. At the worst, it can kill them. For this reason, if you are in a heavy-frost prone reason, grow them under shelter or take cuttings in autumn and plant out in spring. (To do so, select a non-flowering stem 15cm to 20cm long, rub off the lower 7cm of leaves and pop in a pot. In low- to medium-frost areas, they may be popped straight into the ground.)
Another way to avoid frost damage is to time pruning so they flower between the last and the first frosts.
Marguerites flower about six months after pruning, so in areas with mild winters and with planning, flowers can be had all year round.
They do not like heavy pruning, however. New growth on hard wood is slow, puny and sparse, so always leave at least 5cm of the current season’s growth. We used to just shear back the foliage with clippers after flowering had peaked.
Excellent in the flower garden or shrubbery, marguerites are also suitable for pots, especially the smaller patented Federation daisies. Should you want to standardise them, simply rub off all undesirable growth up the trunk.
Health-wise, these daisies are without peer. Only thrips seem to trouble them, and even then only in spring with slight damage to the petals.
As cut flowers, too, they are almost without equal for vase life.
They don’t say “fresh as a daisy” for nothing. Given fresh water every three days, the flower stems will actually grow in the water. For the market, we always picked stems with petals still tightly interwoven but 1cm or so long above the bud. One of the joys of cut flowers in a vase is watching them change, as they open and mature. On these daisies, even the tiniest buds down the stem will swell and open, although the flowers will be smaller and the pink forms’ new flowers will be notable paler.
There is another, less pleasant reason to change the water often – it will start to stink. To describe it as old socks is to be kind. Daisies are not noted for their scent, although some of the double white varieties do have a delicate, sweet smell – for a while. ✤