Cosmos flowers

Some years ago I saw them on a gardening programme and bought myself a packet of seeds. I followed the instructions (I’m not good at following instructions and I am an extremely impatient person) and sowed them indoors on an upstairs window sill in shallow trays of soil. Seedlings soon appeared and when they had four leaves I pricked them out and potted them on. Not heeding Jeremy’s warnings that it was too early I put the growing plants out into a series of tyres that had been dumped along our quiet country road and retrieved and repurposed at The Gables. Against the odds they thrived and grew and eventually flowered and gave me such great pleasure all summer long until the first frosts killed them. I was smitten and every year I sow the seeds, pot them on snd plant them out ahead of the advice in the seed packet. This year the early spring sunshine tempted me to put them out earlier still. Most survived.

I choose a dwarf variety which can withstand buffeting by Bedfordshire winds. I might plant a mixture of heights next year (if I live that long!).

Here’s some Google history from a variety of sources plus my own postscript.

Cosmos flowers, native to Mexico and Central America, trace their history back to 16th-century Spanish explorers who brought them to Europe. Spanish priests cultivating the blooms in mission gardens named them after the Greek word for “ordered universe”, inspired by their perfectly arranged, symmetrical petals.

The UK: The wife of the English ambassador to Spain brought hundreds of cosmos seeds back to Britain in 1787. Because they struggled to adapt to the colder UK climate, the flowers didn’t become a staple in British cottage gardens until much later

Most of the seed packets I buy state (as does Wikipedia) that cosmos flower from late June or early July until the first autumn frosts. Mine began flowering two weeks ago. Impatience isn’t always a bad trait – or I might just have been lucky this year!