In my 30+ years of gardening, I never paid them any mind. But one year—sparked by a memory of the maintenance-free, quick-growing little patch alongside a flower shop where I had worked years earlier—I decided to throw some assorted seeds down. I was pleasantly surprised by their sheer tenacity as well as their diversity and prolific abundance!
Even after some of them were pulled out and left to wither by (allegedly) my landlady at the time, they still survived. (On the record I’m going with the assumption that she innocently thought they were “weeds.”) We all know people like to "look" busy and want everyone to believe that whatever they are doing takes a lot of effort, money, smarts and/or skills. Not everyone is impressed—and some are even, dare I say, threatened—by low-cost, low-maintenance, fast-growing flowers.
“Chaos gardening,” the rebranded, gentrified terminology for this throw-and-go style of gardening, wasn’t really a thing then. Not a lot of “trained and certified Master Gardeners” appreciated the benefits and natural beauty of what we grassroots, no-till, revivalist, forager, "rewilders" called “forest gardening.” I, considering myself an "experiential gardener," delighted in the "sow it and forget it" approach. So seeing those bold little zinnias shoot up out of nowhere was quite a thrill for me—and quite the letdown when I saw them languishing there on the hot, dry, sun-soaked gravel next to the garden where that lady had installed some cheap, hybrid Home Depot ornamentals and plastic pink flamingo stakes in their place. (I suppose that’s still better than artificial flowers and neon-colored plastic garden whirlagigs, right?)
So I took those shriveled-up, foot-long pre-carcasses-- the zinnias, not the flamingos-- potted them, and placed them inside the house right next to the porch windows where that landlady liked to stand a little too long while "watering" every morning—and VIOLA! 😉 They were resurrected in no time. They grew to be about three feet tall and produced some of the most prolific and beautiful blooms I had ever seen.
By some stroke of luck, out of all the mixed seeds I threw in, the heirloom zinnias happened to be the ones that were pulled out, and despite their trauma, they turned out perfect.
And those perky, resilient zinnias quite happily, and healthily greeted that landlady—through the windows—safe and shielded from her excessive, intrusive, toxic "watering, fertilizing and weed-killing" rituals every morning that summer, and fall, and clear into JANUARY!
Ah, karma.
Studies have proven what ancient wisdom always held: zinnias possess beneficial properties. Major bioactive compounds found in zinnia flowers include saponins, glycosides, flavonoids, steroids, and phenols.
Antioxidant Properties
Zinnias have been shown to exhibit antioxidative qualities, which may be part of the reason the flower was revered by ancient tribes.
In one study involving rats with carbon tetrachloride (CCl₄)–induced toxicity, zinnia extracts demonstrated a significant ability to suppress toxicity. In addition, the extracts appeared to improve lipid profiles, including HDL and LDL levels.
Zinnias are also known to have antifungal, phytoremediative, anthelmintic, and hepatoprotective properties.
Hepatoprotective and antioxidant activity of Zinnia elegans leaves ethanolic extract (PDF)
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