Published by Brian Wagner on 10/12/25 in “Growing Flowers from Seed.”
Bellis perennis is a great choice if you would like a dainty small flower popping up in your lawn every spring (and summer). Some consider it a weed, as it is very pervasive (i.e., spready) across lawns in Europe. It is so prevalent in lawns that one can hardly imagine what a lawn would look like without it. It is also quite hardy, down to Zone 4.
There are, however, some truly stunning colour varieties that come true from seed (i.e., they children look like the parents). ‘Pompon Red’ are a stunning scarlet colour, while ‘Pompon White’ is a pure white – and both are double petal morphology (called ‘flora pleno’ (fl. pl.) sometimes). You can also find a ‘Rominette’ series with larger flowers than most.
In my part of the world (Victoria, BC, Canada) there is a famous garden called Butchart Gardens, and every year around November they plant a billion of these little flowers as bedding plants. While I find the practice comically obscene, it does show how cold tolerant they are – and they can flower at Christmas if sown early enough (in mild areas). (I hate symmetrical gardens lol.)
Growing From Seed
Like many ‘weed’ species, these seeds have a non-deep physiological dormancy (PD) that is quite easy to break. If harvesting fresh seeds and you simply can’t wait a few months, you will need to cold stratify the seeds for 4-6 weeks before sowing into cool (15C or 60F) conditions with light. Or, if you can wait, simply keep them dry at room temperature for a few months and they will after-ripen (i.e., naturally lose their dormancy over time) – at which point you can sow the seeds in cool 15C (60F) conditions. Seeds are indifferent to light for the sake of germination.