Daisies Do Their Own Thing

If ever there were plants that have their own ideas about where they will grow it is members of the fleabane family – the erigerons. The chances are that if you have bought plants and tried to establish them in your garden they will have shrivelled and died, while their self sown relatives look down on you from wall crevices or enthusiastically colonise the cracks in the paving of a nearby neglected garden. A few plants appeared in the old stone walls that line one side of our road several years ago and multiplied year on year so that they are now smothering the stonework in a fantastic display – and its not just Erigeron karvinskianus, the Mexican daisy – it has been joined by the larger-flowered Erigeron glaucus, the beach fleabane in a perfect floral marriage.