Welcome to the second installment of our journal segment called “Flower Feature” where we share knowledge about one specific variety of flower and its different applications in floral design, use throughout the world, history, and its meaning in the language of flowers.

Today, we’re talking about the classic daisy!

Every March we host “Daisy Days” at the shop to celebrate the coming of spring. We bring in thousands and thousands of daisy stems which we sell at a discount so that everyone can enjoy them. We sell out every year as our customers love to buy several bunches to share with loved ones and bring a little springtime joy into their spaces after a long winter. In honour of our fifth annual Daisy Days we thought we would share a little bit more about one of our favourite flowers.

Perhaps one of the most common representations of a flower, daisies are sometimes labeled as “basic” or “boring”, but we think they’re just misunderstood. While there are several different varieties of daisies (like most flowers) we bring in the Reagan PonPom Daisy. They have lots of wonderful characteristics such as a long vase life, a relatively low price tag per stem, and they’re available year-round.

Daisies are the birth flower of April, as well as the traditional floral gift of the fifth wedding anniversary. They symbolize innocence, purity, loyal love, and new beginnings, and they are also associated with cheerfulness, simplicity and childlike joy. Daisies are used to represent motherhood, childbirth, and new beginnings, making them a wonderful and meaningful gift to celebrate a new baby.

Historically, in the Victorian era, daisies were often used in the language of flowers to signify loyal love, or the ability to keep secrets. Someone sending you a posy of daisies could mean that your secret is safe with them.

The word “Daisy” originates from the Old English word “dægeseage” meaning “day’s eye”, which refers to the way the flower opens its petals at dawn and closes them at dusk, effectively representing the “eye of the day.”

While white daisies are the most common, different colours of daisies represent different things. White represents purity and innocence, yellow represents friendship and joy, and pink daisies represent romance and gentleness.

Daisies should run you about $3 to $4 per stem and look so sweet in just about any room of your home. If you have pets that enjoy snacking on plants, please keep them out of their reach as they are toxic when ingested. While some flowers are pet-friendly, we never recommend letting pets near them as a precaution. If you are still worried about your critters reaching for your blooms, we do offer a Pet-Friendly Bouquet option.

In our day-to-day designs in the shop we love to use daisies for birthdays and other celebrations, and well as sympathy and funeral pieces. They’re so versatile and go with so many different colour palettes and design styles.

We asked Deanna, our wedding manager and lead wedding designer, to come up with an all daisy wedding and she delivered. If you’re inspired by these designs for your own event, you can inquire with our wedding team here.

Admittedly, daisies can get overshadowed in the world of weddings by more specialty blooms like garden roses, ranunculus, and peonies. They’re not always the first thought unless a client has an affinity with them. So we thought to ourselves, what would we create for someone that loves daisies as much as we do?

When you envision a daisy, what first comes to mind? For us, it’s the classic white petals surrounding a bright yellow center. Many of the flower varieties we use every day fit that vision, but come in all shapes, sizes, and textures. A few notable mentions are cosmos, fever few, calendula, asters, and gerber daisies. They all have similar characteristics because they all fit under the Asteraceae family of flowers. So when you think ‘all daisy wedding’, you have more options than you may have initially considered.

Beginning with a palette of white/cream, soft greens, and a touch of yellow we found some inspiration visuals on Pinterest to guide the feel we wanted to create. By keeping in mind what we enjoy most about daisies we gravitated towards images that felt whimsical, effortless, textural, and delicate.

When we are designing, we keep these visuals and the overall feeling they create in mind. The overgrown meadows and daintily speckled blooms flow throughout the board. Paper-like cosmos dancing in handheld bouquets. A tufted table piece that could adorn any entryway, bar, or guestbook table, and that incredible place card meadow to create an interactive piece for guests.

Keeping along the all white theme with the florals, we looked at what would give us that light, fluttery feel we were going for. Here is a list of everything that we used and their purpose in the design:

White Gerber Daisies - The focal blooms to give some visual weight.

Fever Few - For their movement and delicate texture. 

PonPom Daisies - For the classic daisy look, and to give us a good secondary bloom to create the body of the bouquet. 

White Asters - For the base shape to support the design and give substance.

While we would have loved to include cosmos, they weren't in season when we designed this prompt, however we're looking forward to having them come summertime!

If you enjoyed learning about the humble yet timeless daisy, share this post with another daisy lover and consider buying yourself a stem or two from your local florist. If you've always thought daisies were boring, we hope we've been about to convince you that they're charming and have a ton of range in floral design.