Every garden needs it: the showstopping, super-easy, super-abundant bloom you can always count on for a magnificent birthday bouquet, a quick arrangement for a dinner party, and a scene-stealer in the sunny annual bed. 'Tudor' zinnia is destined to fill this role in your landscape, regaling you with enormous, fully double, intensely colored 3½-inch blooms all summer long.
The flowers begin with the first breath of heat, springing up quickly from direct sowing in the warm spring soil. No flower is easier to grow in sunshine and well-drained soil than super-quick zinnia. Carried on thick, strong stems, these giant blooms simply radiate bold color in the early summer garden. Cut all you like; the quicker you remove the old blooms, the faster new buds arise to take their place.
The show continues all summer in most climates, and well into fall in warmer areas and Indian summers. Long-lasting in the garden or the vase, these flowers are so bright, so cheery, so eye-catching that you may just have to design your entire annual bed around them. And why notthey're quick and easy, and won't melt out in the August heat.
'Tudor' reaches about 3 feet tall and spreads 12 to 15 inches wide, with good branching. Be sure to pick up a few extra packets of this zinnia; it's highly addictive, and you'll keep discovering new places you can squeeze in another plant.
