I loved Wildseed Farms when I had gardens.

These days I order most of my seeds from Select Seeds. No idea if they have purple Zinnia though.

I'm all over the place with seed purchases. For vegetables, my favorites are Park Seeds, R. H. Shumway and Gurney's. For flowers, I love Johnny's Selected Seeds and Park Seeds.

Johnny's Select Seeds may well have what you want.

I've ordered from Wildseed Farms in the past. This year I bought zinnia seeds from Johnny's ... Jazzy Mix, Oklahoma Carmine (purple), and Queen Red Lime.

http://www.johnnyseeds.com/flowers/zinnias/

I buy packets from various vendors at the local farm store or hardware. Ordering seeds online is fine if it's a variety of flower or veg I don't find locally, but the shipping and handling is a killer - esp. for just one or two packs. Renee's Seeds is a favorite of mine for heirloom flowers and colors not often found in the stores.

I buy seeds from various places because I want something specific. The stores are not stocking as many as they once did. I agree the shipping and handling is often more than the seeds.

Do you know what purple zinnia you are looking for? My favorite purple is Purple Prince (Zinnia Elegans). I wasn't able to find it last year, but have it this year.

No. I'm not sure which one... maybe darker purple??? I just couldn't find any purple ones. Zinnias are drought tolerant, low maintenance, bloom all summer, and last really well. I wanted more depth to the colors I already have.

I bought these at RKO (Rural King). Color called violet instead of dark purple tho.

It's disappointing how little seed is in a packet now days.

Walmart is out of my way, but I ended up there today. I saw the Giant Violet Queens and another purple zinnia seed packet. I bought both. I'll get both in the ground tomorrow. Hopefully, something comes up. The seed packets don't always sprout. If these come up and are pretty, I'll save some of the flowers for seed.

Thanks for the help! I don't know if it is because spring is slow this year or the nurseries are cutting back, I have had a really hard time finding my favorite flowers.

Spring is really slow. And with the late frost last week it’s going to be even later. On the bright side, I picked up a bunch of Pentas at Lowe’s today. They were marked down to a dollar each (from3.98) and just had a little bit of frost damage on the outer edges. Good Luck with your seeds!

Purple Prince seeds can be found at Burpee and at SelectSeed. I use Select. Luck!

I'll get both in the ground tomorrow. That gave me a twinge of envy. Mine won't go in the ground for another month. I did start 6 plants of three different ones in the house for earlier blooms.

I finally removed the leaf mulch from my annual bed to let the soil dry out - hopefully. I too won't be able to sow seed until mid or late May. Last year the ground was wet for a long time.

OP: Would love to know how these turn out for you (esp if you notice them attracting butterflies and hummingbirds). I might keep these in mind for next year. :)

I put my most of my plants out over the weekend, yippee! After so many weeks of tending to them inside, I'm ready to get them in the ground and cut the apron strings.

javiwa, we will see on the purple seeds. I save flower heads from plants I like and I've had luck getting them to grow. I'm not big on deadheading so some of my flowers reseed themselves from year to year. I have about five volunteers from that. I do get a lot of hummingbirds and butterflies in the later summer. The hummingbirds like the salvia, lantana, batface cuphea, and vitex the best. The butterflies seem to go for everything including zinnias.

I forgot to add, the hummingbirds are on their way if you haven't seen them yet. I put two of our feeders up and we have had activity. I never see more that three at a time, but they have been busy the last few days.

I've had a few monarchs come through, but I usually don't see many until later in the summer. I lost quit a bit of milkweed with the colder winter and the ones that did come back are coming back from the roots since I cut them to the ground during the winter. I've had a couple of caterpillars. Warmer weather is heading your way if you haven't seen it yet.

I planted a mound of watermelon and a mound of canteloupe in my back flower bed today. We will see what happens with that. The critters may eat the plants (again) if they actually come up. My seed is kind of old and I don't have a lot of room, but sometimes the rogue plants are the most fun.

I grew the Purple Prince zinnias several years ago and got a lot of butterfly and moth action. I saw my first Snowberry Clearwing moth nectaring on it. I thought it was a bumble bee. I couldn't find the picture with the moth, but this zinna is gorgeous on it's own.

Thanks, adellabedella_usa. I happened to be at Walmart today (picked up a packet of Torch Tithonia seeds...will have a ton leftover, I can see!), and the same purple zinnia packet caught my eye -- I am such a sucker for purple flowers. But space is limited, and I should focus on my tithonia experiment for now. As it is, I planted Short Stuff and Profusion zinnias -- unless I'm just not paying attention, no butterflies on the zinnias so far.

We have had a monarch swoop the garden and enjoy the purple buddleia. I found eggs on one of the smaller milkweeds in the yard. I've got several tropical milkweeds under netting for now, trying to increase the leafage to feed the 12-15 eggs I harvested (and am raising indoors...trying to fight this OE parasite one caterpillar at a time).

I've been working non-stop in the yard for at least the past month. It could very well be that the hummers are already cruising in abundant numbers; most likely I just haven't taken time to look up often enough. I managed to force myself to sit for a couple of hours when the cool weather came through last weekend (boy, was that ever nice!) and did see a hummingbird by a(nother) purple flower I planted (it may be an angelonia, but not sure...bought it years ago, and it doesn't look like any other angelonia in the stores). The hummer also visited one of the pink Short Stuff zinnias. By my unofficial clock, the hummer returned every hour.

Thanks for the confirmation, PKponder TX Z7B. I may just pick up a packet for next year. If I weren't traveling out of state for 10 days in late July, I might risk potting up a few, since all the 'full-sun real estate' in my yard is pretty much spoken for. Heck, I think I have ~ 10-15 tropical milkweed seedlings sprouted, and I hope I have space for them.