This list of the easiest flowers to grow from seed includes both annual and perennial flowers and is great for the beginner gardener.
If you love flower gardening and live in a cold winter area, waiting for spring can be difficult. One easy and inexpensive way to combat the winter blues is to start seeds indoors at home. By the time spring arrives, you will have a bunch of plants ready to go, and it's fun to watch them grow.
Where To Buy Flower Seeds
You can find flower seeds in many stores, including big box stores, nursery shops, and hardware stores. You can also find a wide variety online.
Buying Flower Seeds Online
Johnny Seeds - A long time well known grower of flower and vegetable seeds, including organic seeds.
Burpee Seeds - Another historically good company from my state of Pennsylvania. They sell plants as well as seeds. Around here, you can also find small nursery starts from Burpee come spring. They also have a spot where you can enter your zipcode, and they will tell you when to start growing.
Renees Garden - This is a company whose seed packets we sold in our gift shop years ago. The packets are beautiful, and they sell a nice variety of unusual flowers if you want to give them a try.
How to Grow Flowers from Seed
The seed packets will tell you how early to start the seeds, depending on where you live, indoors, before transplanting the seedlings into the garden. Many can also be directly sown into the soil of your garden, but you will want to wait until your frost free date. They will also give you other important information, such as how long to expect the seeds to germinate (start showing growth).
There are many ways to start seeds. You can find kits with multiple cells and domes at big box stores, online, and nursery shops. They work very well. You can easily find seed starting soil that is very fine, or some prefer to use peat pots designed for seed growing. Once you get used to growing seeds, you may even want to create your own mini pots with newspaper and other mediums.
Easy Annuals to Grow from Seed
Calendula
Calendula officinalis, also known as Pot Marigold, is an easy flower to grow from seed. You can grow it indoors or directly sow it in the garden after the last frost date. Calendula petals are edible and can be used to add a pop of color to a salad. You can also make an infusion of calendula petals and oil for homemade bath and body recipes.
Cosmos
Some say cosmos is the easiest flower to grow. You can find them in various colors, often a mix of pinks and burgundy, as shown above. They are tall with long stems, making them a good cut flower. Cosmos require little care and thrive in less than ideal conditions, such as drought and poor soil.
Marigolds
Another very easy-to-grow annual, marigolds are a staple that can be found at every nursery in large flats. They are mostly found in warm shades of yellow, orange, and red. Interestingly, marigolds deter nematodes in the soil, making them a great companion plant for vegetable gardens. Marigold seeds are also easy to collect at the end of the growing season to use next year.
Nasturium
The flowers and leaves of the nasturtium are edible. They have a unique, slightly peppery flavor. Nasturiums can be grown in pots with a compact and bushy variety, or you can grow them as climbers or a vine variety in garden beds or up a trellis.
Zinnia
Probably the most well-known for being easy to grow is the zinnia. They are low-maintenance and hold up well during dry spells in the summer. You can grow them in an array of beautiful colors, and there are many to choose from. The one shown above is 'Queeny Lime Red,' a pretty heirloom variety. It's also very easy to collect the seeds at the end of summer from zinnias and save them for next year.
Easy Perennial Flowers from Seed
Rudbeckia aka Black Eyed Susan
Rudbeckia hirta is native to most of North America, making it a sure bet for the garden. There are many varieties to try, and since they are perennial, they should come back year after year.
Butterfly Weed
Asclepias tuberosa, another native, is commonly called Butterfly Weed because it attracts butterflies and is known as a host plant for the monarch butterfly larvae.
Columbine
Columbine flowers bloom in the springtime and have a lovely cottage garden feel. There are many colors and varieties, and some self-seed here and there in the garden giving you more to love. The image above is a beautiful double pink variety called 'Nora Barlow.'
Coneflower
The common purple coneflower, Echinacea purpurea, is a great flower to grow from seed with a long blooming period from June through September. I love their bright pink flowers with interesting spiky cones in the center that contain seeds birds love, particularly gold finches.
Shasta Daisy
Last but not least is the Shasta daisy, an easy perennial flower that definitely adds brightness to the garden. The scientific name, Leucanthemum × superbum, should not be confused with Leucanthemum vulgare, or Oxeye Daisy, a European native that is now considered invasive.
If you're itching to get out into the garden, consider trying indoor gardening by growing some flowers from seed and getting a head start on the season.
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