Congrats to the four winners of yesterday’s sweet pea collection giveaway: Christina Ariel, Karyn R, Julia of Fairview Farm and Jennifer Bingham!
If you follow along on Instagram, you may remember a period of time last summer when I went a bit crazy sharing photos of a little flower that stole my heart: the scabiosa-flowered zinnia. This little darling was such a joy to discover and I had so much fun designing with them AND decapitating them to create seas of ombre blooms to photograph.
I love the frilly, frosting-like texture of this particular zinnia. Some people have described them as looking more like a gerber daisy than a zinnia, much less a scabiosa. I think these extra frills make them a tad bit more sophisticated and feminine than a standard zinnia, and I love tucking a few into wedding designs where a regular ole’ zinnia would not have worked.
Zinnias, in general, are one of the easiest flowers to grow and they are the perfect flower for beginning flower farmers and gardeners to incorporate into their plots. To help new growers, I recently created a little “Grow Great Zinnias” guide with all of my tips and tricks to growing this staple cutting garden flower.
Because I’m so in love with this flower, I went to great lengths and brought in special seed from Europe just so that you can grow some in your garden this year too. Now I want to spread the love and offer a little giveaway of a packet of scabiosa-flowered zinnia seed to five lucky winners. A limited quantity of scabiosa-flowered zinnia seed is now available for purchase through the Floret Shop.
To enter for your chance to receive a free packet of seeds, simply post a comment below. In your comment, please share your favorite zinnia, if you have one. NOTE: Seeds are available to U.S. residents only (sorry international flower friends!)
Finally, a couple quick growing notes from last season: I found the scabiosa-flowered zinnias had slightly lower germinate rates than other zinnia seeds, but they performed unbelievably well once the plants got established. I had about 70% doubles which I used for event work, while some of the singles got incorporated into mixed bouquets.
They are such a great little flower, and I can’t wait to grow more this season!
Sherry Jackson on
I love the giant Zinna I once move my kids swimming pool and since the grass was dead I worked the soil and planted 10 packets and placed chicken wire around it to hold them up. It was truly beautiful