The whole front yard looks like a garden sometimes
 

We've recently stopped cutting much of the front yard. We're hoping it will eventually grow up in birch and oak and give us a little more privacy from the road. I'm hoping to get some native wildflowers established in the sunny areas, too.

Meanwhile, though, I have to say that Spring brings out the beauty of even the invasive plants. Only some of the grasses and possibly some of the yellow hawkweeds are native here--the rest of the flowers you see in the grass are exotics. Including the Shasta daisies, which turn out to be some of the more problematic weeds we have in the area...you'll see why in the last few shots. :D

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That looks wonderful, Hazel. What is the orange flower in amongst the daisies?

The orange flowers look like Zinnia's? :shrug: Your birches look very healthy btw. :thumbs up

Love your shasta daisies...they look so peaceful IMO.

The daisies are pretty, but a pain, klm...you just can't get rid of them once they're established unless you poison the whole lawn and start over! And probably the poison would kill the native stuff and the daisies would come up again! :rolleyes: Shasta daisies line the gravel roads around here, too.

The orange flowers are another non-native--orange hawkweed. Their saving grace is that the butterflies love them. :D

So pretty :cloud9:

love Daisies :lovestruck::lovestruck:

it looks so pretty even if they are a pain sometimes

It does look very purty and the daisies and hawkweed do look very nice. Too bad they are so invasive.

Would be great if you could introduce some native flowers as well. However, with the daisies growing so prolifically, you may have trouble.

True shasta daisy cultivars are supposed to be sterile. I am wondering if what you have are either oxeye daisies or an accidental hybrid rather than a true shasta daisy:

[url]http://www.invasiveplants.ab.ca/Downloads/FS-OxeyeDaisy.pdf[/url]

[B][COLOR="Blue"]Shasta daisy is a cultivar (originated from) of Oxeye and was originally sterile, but can revert back to being fertile. Oxeye plants can be found sold through nurseries and as seed in wildflower mixes. The two plants can cross breed, resulting in an invasive hybrid that is difficult to distinguish from either parent.[/COLOR][/B]

Apparently daisies are shallow rooted and hand pulling can get rid of them over time (that is if you want to spend the next several springs and summers pulling daisies).:eek: I'm sure you have better things to do with your time.:o

our yard was infested with daisies, I have giant shasta ones in my flower beds, but they are like 3 times the size of the ones that had tried to take over my yard *L* our fields around here are filled with them also.
your front yard looks great like that! how close are you to the road?

That's very interesting info, mikischo. Explains why my one solitary Shasta daisy has been one solitary Shasta daisy for years. Obviously the true sterile type.
That photo of the drift of daisies in the sunlight under the silver birches is a beauty, Hazel. I think you are all just so lucky to have summers where everything is lush and green or flowering, because here it is just bone dry with that terrible risk of bushfires all the time.

[QUOTE=mikischo;1017595]True shasta daisy cultivars are supposed to be sterile. I am wondering if what you have are either oxeye daisies or an accidental hybrid rather than a true shasta daisy:

[url]http://www.invasiveplants.ab.ca/Downloads/FS-OxeyeDaisy.pdf[/url]

[COLOR="Purple"][I]Could very well be! Matches the description, but then one white daisy looks pretty much like another to me.[/I][/COLOR]

Apparently daisies are shallow rooted and hand pulling can get rid of them over time (that is if you want to spend the next several springs and summers pulling daisies).:eek: I'm sure you have better things to do with your time.:o[/QUOTE]

[COLOR="Purple"][I]I spend a good part of my spring yanking them out of the gardens. We have about a third of an acre that is 'infested', and most of that we just keep mowed, but I'll pull them, too, if I have time. Just not enough hours in the day to make much of a dent in them. :o [/I][/COLOR]

[QUOTE=Melinda;1017597]our yard was infested with daisies, I have giant shasta ones in my flower beds, but they are like 3 times the size of the ones that had tried to take over my yard *L* our fields around here are filled with them also.
your front yard looks great like that! how close are you to the road?[/QUOTE]

[COLOR="Purple"][I]I think we've got 150 ft or so to the road. So roughly 50 meters.

These 'wild' daisies are smaller than the ones that I normally see in gardens...which would tie into the oxeye vs. shasta thing. I'm sure that as they cultivated the Shastas from the wild Oxeye, they would have selected for larger, showier flowers. If these are Oxeye, it would explain the size difference... [/I][/COLOR]

[QUOTE=Goldfields;1017615]That photo of the drift of daisies in the sunlight under the silver birches is a beauty, Hazel. I think you are all just so lucky to have summers where everything is lush and green or flowering, because here it is just bone dry with that terrible risk of bushfires all the time.[/QUOTE]

[COLOR="Purple"][I]The last two years have been very wet and lush, GF, but a more normal spring / early summer around here is much drier. We live in the middle of hundreds of thousands of acres of forest and some years it's been like living in a tinder pile. The DNR often parks firefighting trucks a mile down the road at the lake so as to be closer to possible trouble areas during dry years. We're about 30 miles or so from the ranger station so that saves them a good 30-40 minutes response time if there's a fire. :thumbs up
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[QUOTE=hazelrunpack;1017627]



[COLOR="Purple"][I]The last two years have been very wet and lush, GF, but a more normal spring / early summer around here is much drier. We live in the middle of hundreds of thousands of acres of forest and some years it's been like living in a tinder pile. The DNR often parks firefighting trucks a mile down the road at the lake so as to be closer to possible trouble areas during dry years. We're about 30 miles or so from the ranger station so that saves them a good 30-40 minutes response time if there's a fire. :thumbs up
[/I][/COLOR][/QUOTE]

You must be enjoying this Summer as much as I did ours then? I couldn't recall a better one for us, no risk of fires at all. That was a result of a La Nina weather pattern though and I don't think we'll have that next Summer. :( Scary that they put that firetruck near you, but reassuring in a way. How populated is it where you are? What sized blocks?

We're a double township--so 12 miles x 6 miles--with about 80 residents. Pretty sparse. Most of the residents live around the lake.

ohhh nice size front yard, I envy you

hubby thinks the drive is a little long for snowblowing in the winter, but otherwise it's very nice :D