Growing Strawflower: A Complete Profile
By Growing Home Greens Team · July 29, 2026
Strawflower gets its name from its stiff, papery petals, which is also exactly why it’s such a popular dried flower. The daisy-like blooms come in red, orange, yellow, pink, or white on plants 2 to 3 feet tall. Cut and hung to dry, they hold their color and shape for years instead of fading and crumbling the way softer petals do.
Sowing it
Strawflower is flexible on start method: sow indoors about 7 weeks before your last frost, or direct-sow right around that date. Scatter seed on the soil surface and leave it uncovered, since it needs light to germinate. Expect about 80 days to first bloom.
Harvest timing is the whole game
Strawflower is generally low-maintenance, and the main thing to get right is harvest timing if you’re drying it: cut blooms just as they’re opening, not fully open, when 2 to 3 layers of petals have unfolded. They’ll continue to open slightly as they dry, so a fully-open bloom cut too late can look overblown once dried. A double-flowered strain bred for drying, like ‘Silvery Rose’, is more forgiving of this than a single-petaled bedding mix.
A cut-flower border, dried or fresh
Strawflower has no well-established companion pairings, and nothing it needs to be kept away from. It’s a solid pollinator draw and cut-flower pick for a border in the Garden Designer, especially if you want blooms for drying as well as fresh cutting.
Sources: Silvery Rose - Strawflower Seed, Johnny’s Selected Seeds.
Companion planting guide for Strawflower · Find your planting dates
Typically viable in USDA zones 2-10. Not sure your zone? Look it up by ZIP code.
Mature height: 2-3 ft
Method: Either: Start indoors for an earlier harvest, or direct-sow outside for less fuss. Either works.
When to plant strawflower, by zone
Every zone strawflower grows in. Pick your zone in the header and it will be highlighted here. Each zone links to its full page.
| Zone | Start indoors | Sow or plant out | Bloom |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2a & 2b | Apr 1–Apr 8 | May 20–May 27 | Aug 8–Aug 15 |
| 3a & 3b | Apr 11–Apr 18 | May 30–Jun 6 | Aug 18–Aug 25 |
| 4a & 4b | Mar 27–Apr 3 | May 15–May 22 | Aug 3–Aug 10 |
| 5a & 5b | Mar 22–Mar 29 | May 10–May 17 | Jul 29–Aug 5 |
| 6a & 6b | Mar 7–Mar 14 | Apr 25–May 2 | Jul 14–Jul 21 |
| 7a & 7b | Feb 20–Feb 27 | Apr 10–Apr 17 | Jun 29–Jul 6 |
| 8a & 8b | Feb 4–Feb 11 | Mar 25–Apr 1 | Jun 13–Jun 20 |
| 9a & 9b | Dec 28–Jan 4 | Feb 15–Feb 22 | May 6–May 13 |
| 10a & 10bFall window | Aug–Dec | Oct–Feb | ~80 days after transplanting |
Bloom dates are about 80 days after the sow or plant-out date, not after starting seeds indoors.
Zone 2 sows before zone 3 here, which looks wrong and is not. USDA zones rank winter cold, not season length, and zone 2 is mostly interior Alaska, where hard winters come with warm summers. More on what a zone measures.
See exact start-indoors, direct-sow, and harvest dates for your zone →
How many Strawflower plants fit per square foot?
Spacing: 1 per square foot (square-foot-gardening spacing). Mature height: 2-3 ft.
Varieties worth considering
- Silvery Rose (Xerochrysum bracteatum 'Silvery Rose'): A tall, well-branched double-flowered strain in cream and white frosted with rose at the petal tips, bred specifically as a dried flower rather than a garden bedding plant. If drying is the point of growing strawflower at all, this is a stronger pick than a generic mix. (source) Buy seeds: Botanical Interests
- Seashells Mix: Johnny's describes tall, well-branched 36-40 inch plants with 2-2.5 inch double blooms in a pastel blend of light pink, apricot, pale yellow and ivory, a softer color palette than Silvery Rose's cream-and-rose. Also bred for cutting and drying, just aimed at a different color scheme. (source)
- Monstrosum Tall Mix: A vigorous mix in gold, orange, magenta, pink and rose, on the same 36-40 inch frame as Seashells but with bolder, more saturated color than either Seashells' pastels or Silvery Rose's cream-and-rose. The pick for a brighter cut-flower bed. (source)
Why each variety is listed comes from the source shown next to it. We haven't grown these ourselves yet, so treat this as a research-backed starting point, not a personal endorsement. The buy links are separate from those sources: they go to seed suppliers that sell that exact variety, and we may earn a commission on some of them.
Where to buy strawflower seeds
Botanical Interests · True Leaf Market · Burpee (each supplier's strawflower seeds)
The varieties we recommend above each have their own buy links, for the suppliers that sell that exact variety.
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Some links on this page also go to other retailers we may earn a commission from as an affiliate, at no extra cost to you. We only recommend products with a clear consensus of positive, independent reviews, or ones we bought and use ourselves. Each item on our gear page says which.
See it growing
Search YouTube for "growing strawflower" videos → (a live search, not a hand-picked video; results vary and aren't vetted by us)
Pin this for later
Growing Strawflower: A papery-petaled bloom that holds its color for years when dried, grown as much for the vase as the bed.
Save to Pinterest