Once upon a time, I dropped our Westie Daisy, my beloved friend and arch nemesis, off for grooming. If you’ve read her story, you know that she had to be medicated for grooming. The slightest hair pull could trigger horrible, torture chamber-sounding screams. No one wanted that. But with her meds, off she went as chill as she was capable of being for her hair cut. Things got hairy, pun intended, when I went to pick her up.

When I went to pay the bill, the vet tech told me the total, and it was higher than I normally paid. I asked why, and the tech told me that Daisy had to be medicated by the vet. When I explained that I had already given her a tranquilizer before I dropped her off and told the groomer what I had done, the tech went to get the vet.

Things went south from there. My take was that I had already medicated my dog before drop off, and I had let the groomer know what I had done. The vet’s take was that my dog wasn’t well behaved and needed a different vet in the practice to medicate her. When I told the vet that I wouldn’t pay for medication given without my permission, not to mention that might have caused a possible overdose, he told me in a not so friendly way to pay and leave, which left me shaken and upset.

The whole debacle made sense when the tech brought out “my dog” Daisy. Except this dog was a Yorkshire Terrier who also happened to be named Daisy. When I said, “That’s not my dog.” The whole front office groaned with understanding and were horrified by what had happened. The vet apologized, which was good, but I was not ever going to bring my dog back to that office. The take home lesson was that for innocent people and dogs, cases of mistaken identity can be really bad.

In the garden, a case of mistaken identity can be a good thing especially if you love the look of daisies in your yard. Daisies bloom in summer, but if you love the look of white petaled flowers with yellow smiling centers here’s how to get that look in your garden all the way from spring through summer and into early fall.

It’s early May in my zone 6b/7a garden and my first daisy-like flower is fully in bloom. It’s a ‘Jan van Leeuwen’ herbaceous peony shown in the photo at the top of this post. I love this flower with its fluffy white petals and curly yellow faux stamens, or staminodes.

After the peony blooms fade, to continue the daisy theme, I highly recommend growing Cosmos ‘Afternoon White.’ Last year I started my ‘Afternoon White’ cosmos from seed and planted them in my raised bed garden. The flowers are gorgeous with big, white petals and button yellow centers. A daisy by any other name would look as beautiful as our English friend William might have said if he hadn’t been so focused on roses.

And just when your cosmos might be looking a little tired, the best Shasta daisy cultivar that I have ever grown, Leucanthemum ‘Becky,’ should be starting to put on its show. According to the Missouri Botanical Garden website, Shasta daisies were hybridized by Luther Burbank in the 1890s near Mt. Shasta in California and given their name Leucanthemum x superbum meaning superb white flower, and they most certainly are superb white flowers. The cultivar ‘Becky’ is exceptional in its larger size and robust growth, and it is the only shasta daisy that has been reliably perennial in my garden in a variety of soil and sun conditions.

After your legit daisies finish their show, the Anemone ‘Honorine Jobert’ will start to bloom in August through September with its delicate daisy-like blooms. This plant has been very resilient in my garden and survived despite being munched on by deer when newly planted and accidentally dug up when our water line was replaced. This particular cultivar was discovered in Verdun, France in 1858, so it has certainly stood the test of time. I first saw it growing in the gardens at Mount Vernon, and it was so lovely and daisy-like that it stopped me in my tracks.

The older I get the more I appreciate each gardening season. Having a succession of daisies and their sunshiny doppelgangers blooming from spring through fall maximizes the joy that I experience as I stroll through the garden waiting and watching for each new bud to bloom.

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