Zing & Zest

They’ve been steadily gaining popularity for a while now, thanks largely to the favour they’ve found among cut-flower growers, but 2017 was when zinnias reached a flowery zenith. This was the year Fleuroselect, the European body for the ornamental plant industry, named ‘Year of the Zinnia’, the Royal Horticultural Society ran an Award of Garden Merit trial and many big seed companies expanded their zinnia ranges.

Of course, for so many gardeners, all this attention just confirmed what we already knew: of all the annual plants, nothing is quite as vibrant, quite as cheerful or quite as long-lasting in late summer as a gloriously colourful patch of well-grown zinnias.