A blast of sun WHATEVER THE WEATHER
The cheerful daisy family brighten up even the very gloomiest of days
THE British summer is notoriously fickle, with cool, wet conditions just as likely as a heatwave. Sadly, there’s nothing anyone can do to alter that, but there is a surefire way of adding a golden glow to our gardens – plugging gaps with bright and cheerful perennial daisies.
Helenium, coreopsis, rudbeckia, helianthus, inula and other members of the daisy (asteracea) family contain individual varieties that are blessed with blooms in shades of yellow. These flowers provide a splash of sunshine from July until November.
Some of these plants are in full throttle at the moment, while others have buds on the verge of opening, ready for an end-of-season finale. All can be bought in pots now, ready to lift tired beds and borders. Expect an even better show next year, once they’re established.
There’s great diversity among daisies, from knee-high forms to lofty wonders 7ft tall or more, and from bushy plants to more slender specimens. Taller ones are perfect at the back of displays, mid-size plants towards the front.
Flowers range from 1in to about 4in across, with ‘petals’ that might be oval or thin and threadlike. They surround a central ‘eye’ that is sometimes raised or flat like that of a sunflower – these might be the same colour as the petals, or a contrasting shade.
Among my favourite late-flowering daisies are heleniums, clump-forming plants that turn out masses of blooms over a long period. These robust perennials actually come in several shades – bronze, orange and red - with plenty of yellow ones, varying in height from 15in up to 7ft giants.
Helenium ‘Pipsqueak’ grows to just 15in tall and has bright yellow, swept-back petals and a raised central cone, giving it the appearance of a shuttlecock. Launched by Alan Bloom in 1960, ‘Butterpat’ boasts buttery-yellow flowers on 3ft stems and is an RHS Award of Garden Merit holder. All are a magnet to bees and butterflies, apart from ‘Double Trouble’, the world’s first double-flowering helenium. Bred in Holland, it’s still worth growing for its eyecatching bright yellow flower heads. Another essential group for a splash of sunny colour are coreopsis. Largely native to North America, there are scores of garden-worthy ones, including knee-high Coreopsis verticillata ‘Moonbeam’ with its lemon-coloured flowers, and C. grandiflora ‘Flying Saucers’, which has large, bright yellow blooms. Named after the legendary city in Arthurian mythology, ‘Astolat’ has single, fringed yellow flowers with a brownish-red blob at the base of each petal. Rudbeckias are instantly recognisable by their tapering yellow petals arranged around a raised central dome that is black, brown or green – this distinguishing feature has provided these American prairie perennials with the common name coneflower. In my old London garden, a large clump of Rudbeckia fulgida var.deamii lit up a sunny bed from late summer until October with countless yellow daisies with brown cones. Rudbeckia laciniata ‘Herbstonne’ is an unforgettable sight from the middle of summer, when its robust, 6½ ft-tall branches reach high into the air and tiny buds unfurl into daisies the colour of egg yolks – each bloom is about 5in wide with swept-back petals around a chartreuse cone. One daisy that is not for the faint-hearted is Inula magnifica ‘Sonnenstrahl’, an imposing variety from the Caucasus with 8ft-tall stems clothed in large, dark green leaves up to 3ft in length, and topped with bright yellow flowers measuring 6in across. Its narrow, spidery petals encircle an orange disc. As you might expect, perennial daisies will do best in a warm, sunny spot and prefer damp but well-drained soil.
However, they’ll put up with just about any kind of soil. If you’re on clay that tends to dry out in summer, improve it prior to planting by digging in plenty of leafmould, garden compost or well-rotted manure.