The Burbank Shasta Daisy Garden
Created 2001 to Celebrate a Century of the Shasta Daisy. Updated June
2006.
Many varieties usually available are illustrated below.
Read the fascinating story of the Shasta Daisy at bottom of
page.
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The
Chuck Sharp Cottage Garden Containing: Original Site Of Well, Shasta Daisy Collection, Other Burbank Introductions Created 2005 |
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The Chuck Sharp Garden looking west. |
| Click to see The Garden Updated June 2006 | |
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| Specific Varieties | Descriptions |
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Summer
Snowball - Compare with Alaska on left, the pure white that took 15 years to develop. |
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Aglaya - 3 feet tall, large frilly double, long blooming season |
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Alaska - 3-4 feet tall, big, old fashioned single |
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Brent's Choice - 3 feet tall, flowers single with "cut" petals |
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Chiffon - 4 feet tall, frilly 'cut' petals, large double, long blooming season |
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Exclusive to Gold Ridge Farm: Chuck's Delight - Developed by one of our volunteers. This wonderful plant is 3 feet tall, with large, full, frilly double blossoms. |
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Esther Read - dwarf, 15" tall, double flowers, long blooming season |
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Silver Prince - 3 feet tall, single flowers on long sturdy stems |
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Silver Princess - dwarf, 2 feet tall, single flowers |
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Snow Cap - dwarf, 18" to 2' tall, single flowers |
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Snow Lady - dwarf, 1 to 2 feet tall, single flowers |
See additional daisy photos here
These are some examples of a collection that changes from time to time. Not all are available all the time. Many can be had at weekly plant sales. Sorry, no mail order is possible.
The Shasta daisy has been praised as one of Luther Burbank's most outstanding achievements. For him, the development of this classic garden flower was a true labor of love, a labor that took more than 15 years to complete.
As a child growing up in Massachusetts, Burbank had loved the wild oxeye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) that grew in fields throughout New England. This hardy little European native had been introduced accidentally by the Pilgrims and was regarded by local farmers as a pesky weed. Burbank saw the wildflower as something waiting to be made more beautiful.In 1884, Burbank purchased 4 acres near Santa Rosa and began developing his nursery. One of his first projects was the refinement of the oxeye. Ideally, his daisy would have flowers of extreme size with beautiful broad petals of dazzling whiteness, smooth stems and good keeping quality, on sturdy plants that bloomed early and persistently. To those ends, he planted seeds from oxeyes he had selected in New England, and allowed the flowers to be pollinated freely by the local insects. After a few seasons of saving and planting the seeds from the best of these open-pollinated daisies, he still saw no significant improvement in their flowers.
Taking the best of these oxeyes, he dusted their flowers with pollen from the English field daisy (Leucanthemum maximum), a species with larger but less graceful blossoms. These new hybrids were planted at Gold Ridge Farm in Sebastopol, where they were grown ultimately in rows 700 feet or more in length. The daisies flowered in their first season (instead of requiring 2 years to reach blooming size) and bloomed earlier with larger and more abundant flowers than those of their parent species.
Seeking further improvement, Burbank dusted the best of these hybrid blossoms with pollen from the Portuguese field daisy (Leucanthemum lacustre), For the next 6 years, he selectively bred this triple hybrid, choosing from among a half million individual flower heads to find the few that most closely matched his ideal ensemble of qualities.
Eventually, his hybrid daisies produced gorgeous flowers that were far superior to those of any of their parent species. Burbank found his new daisies to be perfect in every way, except that they lacked the glistening whiteness that he idealized for them. To gain this, he dusted his best hybrids with pollen from the Japanese field daisy (Nipponanthemum nipponicum), a species with small but perfectly white flowers. Two seasons later, he had daisies with pure white flowers that were larger than the largest of any of the earlier hybrids.
In 1901, Burbank offered his new flowers as a mixed selection, the Shasta Daisy Hybrids, naming them for Northern California's great snow-covered peak. From the first, Shasta daisies were distinct from all others. Botanically speaking, they were an entirely new species, Leucanthemum x superbum and became an immediate worldwide success.
In 1904, Burbank introduced the first named varieties of Shasta daisy: 'Alaska', 'California', and 'Westralia'. As late as 1925, he continued to offer new varieties of the flower, and further development by later plant breeders continues to this day - more than 100 named varieties have been introduced since 1901. The Shasta daisy has, in fact, the longest history of continuous popularity of any hybrid American garden flower.
Bob Hornback, April 2001
Last updated on July 2, 2006