Chocolate Cosmos

4/11/2011

I’m going to give the prize for the best performing perennial of the year to this Chocolate Cosmos, whose official name is Cosmos atrosanguineus “Chocamocha”, and names don’t come more splendid than that. I bought a few plants of it in June from Cath’s Garden Plants, ( http://www.cathsgardenplants.co.uk/) who are just down the road from us at Heaves and they have been in flower from then until now with no sign of giving up.

We’ve had a few frosts, which they have shrugged off. This photo was taken today and it’s astonishing that there are not only lots of flowers in bloom but also masses of buds. We haven’t paid it the slightest attention since it was planted, so it has performed this well without any dead-heading. In the past I’ve had difficulty getting this plant through the winter in the ground, but I’m going to follow Cath’s advice and give it a good mulch, and hope for the best.

It’s not called Chocolate Cosmos for nothing- the flowers smell strongly of chocolate.

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About Slow Life

The idea of Slow Life is to take the principles of Slow Food, which are “good, clean and fair”, and extend them to life in general.

Here in the Lake District, the air is clean, the pace is slow and the atmosphere is calm. If we don’t grow food ourselves, we can buy it in friendly small shops, where you know the quality is going to be the best.

This blog is a celebration of the Slow Life, with forays into the world of design, music, the arts, gardens, and my particular weakness, Japan.