Calendula Pacific Beauty Cream

Soft buttermilk-yellow daisies, semi-double rather than packed, many of them with a dark chocolate centre that gives the flower some weight. They come on tall upright stems at 50 to 60cm from the Pacific Beauty cutting series, so the stems are genuinely straight and long enough to use.

The pale yellow is the useful part. It sits with pinks, blues and whites in a way that orange never will, so it is the calendula for a border or a bouquet where the usual pot marigold would jar. Semi-double also means the centre stays open, so bees and hoverflies can still work it.

Not every flower gets the chocolate eye. It is variable within the strain and a proportion come plain, which is worth knowing if the dark centre is the thing you are buying it for. As with all the pale calendulas, seedlings drift back towards yellow and then orange over a few generations, so this is one to re-sow from a packet rather than rely on self-seeding. It flowers from June to the frosts and asks very little.