How to Plant, Grow, and Care For Benary’s Giant Zinnias

Big, beautiful, and bountiful, 'Benary's Giant' zinnias are the gold standard for these low-maintenance plants. Cut flower gardener Melissa Strauss talks about growing these fabulous, mighty bloomers in your garden this season.

As a cut flower gardener, zinnias are one of my favorite summer annuals to grow in the cutting garden and anywhere else. These big, bold, bright blooms are so cheerful and prolific that if you take good care of them, they will continue to bloom right up until the first frost kills them off.

Zinnias aren’t just great as ornamentals. They are also a wonderful food source for all kinds of pollinators. There are few spots in the yard where I see as many butterflies as I do in my zinnia patches. Every year, I plant more, and now these beauties pop up all over the place, where I sow them, as well as where they sow themselves.

Here’s how to add an extra unique blend of zinnias to your garden with ‘Benary’s Giant’ seeds!
What Is ‘Benary’s Giant’ Zinnia?
‘Benary’s Giant’ zinnias are all the things that are wonderful about the Zinnia genus. Long, strong stems, big, bold, colorful flowers, and an excellent cut-and-come-again habit. As a cut flower gardener, these are at the top of my list for long-lasting and beautiful summer bouquets. I’m not the only one who feels this way about them, as the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers awarded them as their first-ever Cut Flower of the Year in 1999.

Characteristics
Zinnias are wonderful, sturdy, long-flowering annuals that cheer up the garden and the dining room table, too! Their slender but stiff stems make them great for cutting. Be careful when you snip, though; those stems are hollow and crush easily. The stems and leaves are slightly fuzzy, giving them a sandpaper texture.

‘Benary’s Giant’ zinnias are some of the most magnificent around, primarily because of their large, bold blooms. These flowers are extra large, at up to six inches in diameter. They’re also densely petaled and come in a wide variety of shades.

You’ll love how well these hold up outdoors. They tolerate wind and rain better than most, and they stay beautiful throughout the hot months. Like all zinnias, these are pollinator magnets; bumblebees and butterflies are especially huge fans.

Native Area

Zinnias are native to a wide range that spans from the Midwestern United States to South America. You’ll find the greatest diversity of the plants in Mexico where they occur mainly in dry grasslands and scrub areas. They’re cultivated all over the world and naturalized in several countries.
Zinnia elegans, the species that holds the ‘Benarys Giant’ cultivar, is native to Mexico, Central, and South America.

Planting
Zinnias are fast growers that tolerate heat well. They take about two months to grow from seed to bloom, and you can succession sow them beginning around March in warm climates. You can continue to sow seeds well into the summer months, and have tons of these blooming in the fall.
How to Grow
It doesn’t get much easier than ‘Benary’s Giant’ zinnias. As long as you wait until it’s warm enough, they are easy to grow and care for. They are attractive to some common pests, but otherwise, they tolerate a wide range of conditions and provide a ton of color in the garden.
Maintenance

The more you cut the flowers, the more these plants will bloom. They are annuals, so there’s not much else to do other than decide upon your removal method at the end of the season. You can cut the foliage to the ground and leave the roots to help fortify the soil, or pull them out entirely. Make sure to deadhead if you’re not using these as cut flowers.

Propagation
‘Benary’s Giant’ zinnias are so easy and fast to grow from seeds that they are seldom propagated in other ways, but you can propagate them from cuttings. Snip a healthy stem that has not flowered and remove the leaves from the bottom half. Put the cut end in water and wait for it to grow roots. This will take about three or four weeks.
Once your cutting grows roots, you can transfer it to soil, either in a container or in the ground. Make sure that the soil remains moist until the plant is well established.