New Day® Strawberry Shortcake Mix Gazania Seeds

It's a New Day® indeed for the cut-flower lover with this exciting mix of all the glorious colors in the series, including the bicolors and stripes! Strawberry Shortcake Mix is a merry blend of the very best, boasting 4- to 5-inch daisies that hold up beautifully in garden and vase, and continue to arise on compact plants from late spring all the way into fall.

Versatile and very dependable, this lovely Treasure Flower can be grown in a container with airy grasses and trailing plants, or along the edge of the sunny border, or as groundcover for dry soil. The foliage is evergreen, the plant is compact and neat, and the bloom power is simply terrific in any sunny setting. And you get all the bright New Day® colors here: red, pink, white, rose, burgundy, yellow, all with a big golden eye!

And New Day® is very uniform, so you can expect every color in this series to reach about the same height and begin blooming within a week or two of one another, in late spring in most climates. They continue through summer on plants reaching just 8 to 10 inches high and 6 to 8 inches wide. They will even go into fall in mild and warm climates, the flowers closing up at night and on cloudy days, only to reopen, fresh and pretty, when the sun emerges again!

Native to South Africa, Gazania stands up to garden stresses that defeat many other plants. Actually a tender perennial hardy in zones 9-11, it sports foliage that will stay evergreen in warm climates and stands up to heat, humidity, drought, and even salt spray. (A great plant for the coast, it appreciates sandy soil in any climate.) Nibbling deer and rabbits tend to give Gazania a wide berth, so it can be grown in an open setting where wildlife grazes.

If you are growing New Day® in containers, bring them indoors before first fall frost and the flowers may continue as winter houseplants in a sunny window! If growing them in the garden, it is easy to root cuttings for new plants.

And New Day® is simple to start from seed. Start the seeds 4 to 6 weeks before the last scheduled spring frost, germinating them indoors in a Bio Dome or a tray. Plant them at a depth of 4 times the size of the seed. It is important to plant deep enough to keep the seed in darkness. Transplant when the seedlings have at least 2 sets of true leaves. If planting outdoors, sow to the same depth, just after the last frost. Have fun with this low-maintenance delight! Packet is 25 seeds.