Do you love bright, cheerful colors in your home and garden, but you don’t want to spend a lot, go on a wild goose chase for a specific flower, or try to grow something high maintenance?
Zinnias are the perfect flower to grow or add to bouquets, and lilliput zinnias are one of the most popular varieties available. Seeds and cut flowers alike are almost always sold as a mix of colors, so you’re guaranteed to get a good range.
Read more to learn about these fun and joyful flowers, how to grow them, and where to find them for yourself.
What Is the Lilliput Zinnia?
If you’re familiar with zinnias, there’s a good chance that you’ve seen lilliput zinnias without even knowing it because they’re so common–and it’s easy to see why!
Their best feature is their rainbow of colors: they can be pink, purple, red, orange, yellow, or white. While they are a semi-dwarf variety with small, round flowers, they also boast double blooms for a very full and beautiful appearance.
Lilliput zinnias will reach a height of 18 to 24 inches tall at maturity and are native to Mexico.
Decorate Your Home and Garden
There’s something about bright, colorful flowers decorating your space that can lift anyone’s spirits. With their range of colors, each of which will usually display multiple tones in each bloom, it’s no wonder they’re such a popular choice for flower enthusiasts everywhere.
If you’re looking for specific colors for special occasions, such as a wedding or to celebrate a specific person, lilliput zinnias will likely give you what you’re looking for. And if you just want a burst of color, well, that’s what they do best!
Whether you want to invite friendly pollinators to your garden, like bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, or brighten your interior decor, this is a flower that can do it all. Cut flowers will last about a week in a vase, giving you plenty of time to enjoy them.
How To Grow Lilliput Zinnias
If you’ve always dreamed of having a colorful flower garden but you don’t know where to begin, lilliput zinnias are a great place to start! They’re very simple and forgiving flowers to grow, and you can even get your kids involved. You’ll end up with the reward of colorful flowers with very little time and effort.
A good spot to grow these flowers would be somewhere that gets full sun all day. Don’t worry about too much heat or the soil drying out; they do very well in these conditions and are fairly drought resistant, though ideally they would be watered regularly.
Because lilliput zinnias are a smaller variety, you can also grow them entirely indoors! Keep them near windows so they still get as much sunlight as possible.
They’ll do best in soil that has some kind of fertilizer and drains easily; overwatering can be just as harmful as underwatering
If you’re in an area that gets frost in the winter, wait until after the last frost to plant seeds outside or start inside a couple of months before bringing them outside.
Drop seeds into very shallow holes a few inches apart from each other. As they grow larger, you can thin out the weaker plants so that the stronger ones have about a foot on each side.
Lilliput zinnias are pretty pest resistant, so you likely won’t need to worry about creepy crawlies. They also don’t require pruning or pinching, although you can “deadhead”, or remove, the spent blooms that you don’t pick.
If you plan to cut your Lilliput zinnias, pick them just before they’ve fully bloomed to get the longest life out of them. This way, you’ll get to watch them open up and finish blooming. They are annuals, so you need to replant them each year.
Where To Buy Lilliput Zinnias
Seeds To Grow Your Own
Due to their popularity, seeds for these flowers are pretty easy to find and very affordable.
If you want to start growing lilliput zinnias yourself, you should know that seeds are almost always sold as a mix of colors and generally not separated out. You won’t know the color of each individual color until it blooms, creating a beautiful rainbow in your garden.
True Leaf Market has a great, high-quality mix of lilliput zinnia seeds that will give you the burst of color you’re looking for, and a mix from Hoss Tools contains a slightly different variety of zinnias, but will give you flowers in the same colors and of a similar size.
Fresh Zinnias
Because lilliput zinnias are such a common flower, they aren’t usually too difficult to find fresh cut. In fact, it’s possible that you might even spot them in grocery stores, especially specialty markets that stock locally grown or more interesting flowers.
If you’ve seen flowers for sale at your local farmers’ market, there’s a good chance these zinnias are among them. They’re a crowd pleaser but are so simple and low maintenance to grow that many farmers add them on as a bonus crop to expand their offerings.
Florist shops and flower farms are almost sure to have lilliput zinnias, and if they don’t, they can definitely get them for you by request. You won’t be the only one who wants them!
A Rainbow of Zinnias
It’s easy to see why lilliput zinnias are such a beloved bloom. Their stunning range of colors and double blooms will put a smile on your face every time you see them in your home, and growing them is a simple and rewarding experience.
Zinnias are a varied and fun flower, and there’s a lot more to learn about how to care for them, other interesting varieties to keep an eye out for, and more! Interested in more zinnia content? Visit my zinnia page for more growing tips, care guides, bouquet suggestions, and more!
- About the Author
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Hope Schwartz-Leeper is an avid reader, writer, and lover of all things nature with degrees in English and Philosophy.
Born and raised in the Northeast, Hope has always had an affinity for spending time outside. Growing up and attending college in New York, then living on Cape Cod and finally settling in Rhode Island has given her plenty of experience with the climate and environment of these areas.
She loves growing her own food and plants and is always trying to grow something new. She’s hoping her apple trees will one day bear fruit, but for now she’s excited about anything that comes from the garden.