The three inch blooms, white with yellow centers, open around the first of June for about three weeks. The plant will occasional put out additional blooms through the summer. Pull the blooms off when they start turning brown to keep the plant looking tidy. Give a moderate amount of water and fertilize with a liquid fertilizer every six weeks. The blooms attract butterflies.

  Shastas require no special care, though the clumps should be divided every couple of years as the older sections become woody and lose their vigor, resulting in fewer flowers. The clumps usually contain a number of young shoots that originate from the root clumps.

  In the spring, start new plants with strong shoots that have rooted around the edges of the old clump. Plant them about 10 inches apart. Plants can also be found at garden centers in the spring. Shastas are usually planted in the middle to rear of the flower bed.

 Daisies can be grown from seeds started in the spring or fall. Plant the seeds one-quarter inch deep a couple of inches apart. Plants sprout in about 10 to 15 days. Thin to about 10 inches apart when the plants are three inches tall. Notice that the picture of the daisy seedling on the packet since seedlings look a lot like weeds, so be careful in weeding.

 Many varieties of daisy are available as seeds, including double varieties with blooms that look like their close relatives, chrysanthemums. A few varieties may by available as seeds in garden centers, Many more are available from mail order business and E-bay (see below).

 Shasta Daisy is the result of 17 years of hybridization by the horticulturalist, Luther Burbank (1846-1926). He had a great love for the wild oxeye daisies in front of his family home in New England. The young plant-breeder was inspired to develop these wildflowers for use as garden flowers, and envisioned an ideal daisy. In order to achieve his goals he used four different plants, creating a quadruple hybrid.

 Starting with the oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) and cross-pollinated it with the English field daisy (Leucanthemum maximum) which had larger flowers than the oxeye. The best of these hybrids were then dusted with pollen from the Portuguese field daisy (Leucanthemum lacustre).

 These bloomed nicely, but Burbank wanted whiter, brighter flowers. He took the most promising of these triple hybrids and pollinated them with the Japanese field daisy (Nipponanthemum nipponicum), a species with small, pure white flowers. Finally, he got the beautiful large white daisy. He named it for the lovely Mount Shasta in Northern California near where he was working. The Shasta daisy hybrids were introduced in 1901.

  Due to their long stiff stems and long vase life, daisies make some of the best cut flowers and are often used in florist's bouquets.

Alaska: 24" tall, 3"-4" blooms;
Fiona Coghill: 30" tall, 3.5" blooms, double, frilly petals;
Snow Cap: 18" tall, 4" blooms;
Snow Lady: 8"-12" tall, dwarf