Before you do anything at all, I want you to try this with me. Close your eyes and picture the most beautiful flowers you've ever seen. When you open your eyes, describe them and write down the best features.
Were you most dazzled by the color? By the shape and fullness of the petals? By some unique feature you'd never noticed on flowers before?
Get really clear on what you're hoping to attract in your flower breeding patch. You may find some of Mother Nature's best surprises end up becoming your favorites, but it is still so much fun to dream and set intentions for a breeding goal.
Setting Intentions When Crossing Flowers
Even if you don't 100% know what you hope to attain with your breeding project, it helps to begin with some sort of goal in mind.
Maybe start out with your favorite color combination. Or, you can work on a mix of colors that look really beautiful when planted together.
Even if you don't know precisely how you want your flowers to look, you can think about things like whether you wish to sell the seed or the cut flowers. Will you have a flower farm eventually? Will it be a cut-your-own flowers facility?
What are your intentions with the seeds as you grow them out? Will you share any of your extras with friends or family? Will you recruit another farm or gardener to help you grow them out in greater quantity once you nail down your ideal color and form?
Gaining Inspiration on Flower Hybridization
Once you start looking for inspiration to bring to your garden, you may not be able to shut it off! Soon you will want to buy a larger property - or multiple properties! - to keep your garden dreams and visions flowing.
Here are some of my favorite places to tap into inspiration when breeding flowers.
Dream Your Own Dreams First - What comes to mind for you personally? What is your favorite color? What flowers make you the happiest? What do you wish and hope will happen with each new blossom that opens? Start there and see where it takes you!
Dream with the Best - To get a head start on your breeding goals, why not take a peek at what some of the top flower farmers are doing in their breeding projects? You may find someone so passionate about their love of what they're doing that it becomes contagious! Tap into that amazing energy!!
Some growers, like Floret Flower Farm, may be way above and beyond our starting points, and that is okay. Everyone starts somewhere, and you can look at someone else's success as a breadcrumb or driftwood to follow as you work to find your own space in the world of flower breeding.
Join Others on the Journey - Another phenomenal place to gain inspiration for your breeding initiatives is to join a Facebook group specifically for breeding the types of flowers you are growing. My favorite flower breeding group is Zinnia Breeding - A Learning Journey.
Find the Experts - For me personally, once I got started growing my dad's saved zinnia seeds, I started researching more and more about this. I ran across some pretty incredible information from a guy who goes by the moniker Zen_Man on Dave's Garden and Houzz. You can check out some of his earlier posts to get some inspiration before setting your flower breeding intentions!
It can be fun to breed your own zinnias
How to hybridize zinnias -- it's easy.
Zen_Man has published volumes of amazing tips and insights about zinnia breeding. You'll either love me or hate me for sharing this with you... get ready to have NO free time left now as you are sucked into all of this wondrous knowledge!
Documenting Your Intentions
Now that you have an idea of the goals and intentions you want to set for your flower hybridizing project, it's time to write it all down.
You can keep track of your seed breeding intentions in a garden journal, breeding log, or a digital spreadsheet. Even a regular old notebook would work just fine for this purpose.
Be sure to include:
- The Date, at least the year
- Parent plants
- Traits you're selecting for
- Desired outcome (with sketches or photo examples if possible)
You can (and should!) also document your flower breeding journey on your social media, on video like YouTube, or even on your own website like we are! The possibilities are endless.
Bringing Mindfulness to Your Seed Breeding Intentions
Some gardeners may be most comfortable with a direct approach to flower breeding. However, if you'd like to incorporate some mindfulness, such as meditation, visualization, or even add a touch of manifesting into your gardening routine, it can be a beautiful way to experience additional peacefulness in the process.
Here are some suggestions for how you can be more mindful about your flower crosses:
- Sit in your garden and do a meditation, visualizing your flowers forming buds and opening one by one. Notice the colors!
- Create a vision board where you include the desired features of your dream flowers and use paint, pastels, or other art supplies to bring them to life.
- Visit your garden in the moonlight and state your intentions out loud before your flowerbed. Envision your resulting seedlings and flowers as you express your hopes and dreams for this breeding project.
Setting Intentions for Hybrid Flowers
To make it official, create and write down a beautiful intention for your flower breeding project.
You'll want to pull together as much clarity as possible, such as the goals for form, display, and disease resistance, as well as turnaround time to reach a stable variety, among other possible factors.
Here's a sample zinnia breeding intention I am working on for my own breeding goals:
Breeding Intention for Shifting Colors Sunset Zinnias
Year: 2025
Flower Type: Zinnia (likely Zinnia elegans)
Project Name: Sunset Skies (working title — still TBD!)
Intention Statement:
In 2025, I intend to develop a line of zinnias that evokes the full spectrum of a summer sunset—blending peach, coral, orange, and raspberry tones—while featuring an abundance of densely layered petals that give the illusion of "miles of petals." My main focus is to create flowers that shift in hue as they age, offering visual movement and surprise in the garden, shifting from apricot to strawberry or orange to raspberry, and so forth.
Using open-pollinated selections from my current favorite “sunset” zinnias and color-shifting varieties, I will cross and select for:
- High petal count (preferably double and fully double blooms)
- Color morphing tones (e.g., coral to rose, orange to raspberry)
- Strong stems and 24–36" height for cut flower production
- Branching habit with prolific cut-and-come-again blooming
- Resistance to powdery mildew
I will trial at least 50 plants in 2025, tagging standout performers by bloom week 4. The goal is to stabilize the color-shift and petal density traits over 3 generations, while maintaining healthy growth and garden appeal. These flowers will be part of a future collection designed to bring joy, awe, and a sense of wonder through natural transformation.
Adapting and Evolving with Each Iteration
As the offspring of your flower parent crosses start to bloom, you can bet your last pinch of seeds that you're going to see some unique surprises. Some may be just what you're hoping for, and others may be way off.
Remember that it is a sign of strength when you adapt and recalibrate. Sometimes you may need to pivot if some crosses don't go as planned. You may need to plant out more seeds from previous genetics.
Pay attention for unexpected beauty and unexpected opportunity. You can win the breeding game when you remain flexible and update your intentions as you discover the wonders of each cycle.
Have something to share? Let's chat in the comments!