Although a few weeks later than last year, my cosmos jungle is finally growing and filling up the garden. 

I absolutely adore garden cosmoses. They are such an amazing plant, they spread easily, flower throughout the summer, and return every year. I had many different varieties, but lately, I grow only the ones that grow on their own, I collect their seeds and spread them to the new areas in the garden.

Cosmos is a perfect shade-making plant and its roots aren’t as invasive as some other flowers so it won’t kill the vegetables. 

This year I went with the already normal procedure, I left every single plant that grew in May and removed the ones that were on the paths in June. They were growing slower due to the cold May, but now they are growing like they should and all of them are doing their job. Some of them are protecting my fefferoni peppers, others provide shade for zucchinis and some just look pretty.

Besides the self-sown flowers this year I decided I’d start making flower borders around the garden, the plan is to make a flower fence around the vegetable beds, just to make the garden look prettier. 

I messed up the process this year by forgetting to order flower seeds, but I’ll try to make up for it this autumn with planting perennials and biannuals.

The upper part of the garden will be home to shrubs, the left side will host bulbs and flowers that like sun, the right side will have flowers that like shade, which in our case are cottage garden flowers and at the bottom of the garden I’ll create a border with cosmoses and Sweet Williams. 

I had some cosmos seeds collected from last year so I’ve sown them to start creating the border. I’ve placed the border between the vegetable beds and the part where I have my berries and orchard. The border will separate vegetables from the fruit garden, but it will also act as a shade for my strawberries and blackberries.

I’m hoping the cosmoses will start growing here on their own, if not I’ll sow them again next year. 

Together with cosmoses, I threw some garden balsam and marigolds, just to mix it up a bit and to be able to collect their seeds. I also threw some zucchini seeds here and to my surprise, they actually started growing so now I have some zucchinis together with the cosmoses. There’s no harm done as they are all annuals and they won’t be here next year. 

Also in early spring, I’ve transplanted my rhubarb to the cosmos location. I kept it in the shaded part of the garden before but it seems that this part might be too cold for it. The rhubarb actually gave me a fright a couple of days back. I was certain that I’ve managed to trim it while I was mowing the grass around the cosmos bed. I couldn’t find it anywhere and the area in front of the cosmoses was empty. 

It turns out that I didn’t mow it, the cosmoses got bigger and spread in front of the rhubarb so I just couldn’t see it. I found it yesterday while I was pulling out the weeds on my strawberry bed. 

It’s still tiny, I’ll see if next year’s leaves will get any bigger or it just doesn’t like this part of the country since I don’t know anyone that grows rhubarb here. 

Maybe the cosmos border will help now that I have her in a sunny spot but not in direct sun as the cosmos plants are protecting it. 

I have many plans for my garden and all the time it seemed like there were some unexpected things stopping me from making them a reality. Maybe next year I’ll finally have my little flower jungle with cosmoses flowering everywhere.