Driving slowly to scan the fields and farms along Volkman Road, Bonnie MacArthur comments, “That’s it.” The avid gardener has spied The Zinnia Meadow, an eye-popping palette of brilliant colors in the beds along the road. In patches among the zinnias grow stands of sunflowers and bursts of cosmos, irresistible to the bees and butterflies that lilt through the rows of stems and branches to the hum of cicadas.
The Zinnia Meadow sits on the 10-acre homestead Ellie Ziliak shares with her husband, Austin, not far from his family’s farm. Two years ago, Ellie started tilling rows of zinnias and sold customers the opportunity to snip and pay. “I stopped at a U-pick while visiting my grandparents in Wabash and thought, ‘I can do this,’” she says.
So, she did, and her garden grew. Customers returned and spread the word. The field of blooms multiplied as Ellie sprinkled variety among the rows of zinnias with bursts of cosmos and stalks of sunflowers. “The more flowers, the less moving,” she says, smiling.
Wandering the rows, Newburgh, Indiana, resident and visiting gardener DeeDee Shoemaker gazes around in awe at the panoply of plants as Ellie approaches her. “Beautiful. And bountiful. And big,” DeeDee says to Ellie. “You have zinnias galore and more.”
Farming is in Ellie’s family’s legacy. She studied agribusiness management, farm management, and crop science at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, to prepare to continue the tradition of growing corn and soybeans in her north central Indiana hometown of Wabash. In class at Purdue, she met Austin, and blooms of love flowered. After graduation in May 2022 and marriage the following year, Ellie’s plans were rerouted south to her husband’s family’s rich farmland in Vanderburgh County, where Ellie works as a real estate agent for CENTURY 21 Scheetz.
The Zinnia Meadow takes time and effort, but Ellie’s farmer focus is efficiency. “Harvesting is easy if the heads are left on the stems to dry after the last bloom in October,” she shares. After harvest, she breaks the heads into seeds and lets them dry over the winter, then scatters them back into the flower beds in the spring.
Simplicity is key and extends to watering. “We actually don’t water the flowers at all and just rely on rainfall, because for water for our house, we rely on a cistern. We don’t have wells because the water table is too deep,” she says.
In the coming years, besides the zinnias and sunflowers and cosmos, Ellie is considering adding other seasonal flowers — perhaps tulips, she says — and, later, even expanding her garden’s variety of flowers via a greenhouse. But baby comes first: Ellie and Austin are expecting their first child in October.
Because its namesake floral enjoys a long flowering season, The Zinnia Meadow is open from early July through October. Customers can stop and snip flowers 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Sunday at 2440 Volkman Road.
