CHOCOLATE BUNNIES
Chocolate cosmos is one of the stars of summer. Its deep velvety brown flowers, which slowly fade to a dusky red, enrich any planting scheme, and the faint scent of chocolate cake wafting on warm, sunny days is an added bonus. I’ve combined it here with a dark-purple salvia and the beautifully soft, tactile seedheads of a pennisetum, tipped white like a rabbit’s tail. For a bit of sparkle, I’ve added some young thalictrum plants at the base.
How to achieve the look
I wove this basket out of brown willow several years ago. It will deteriorate if left out all year, so I used a large plastic pot that fitted neatly inside and planted everything up in that. A rattan cane basket would work just as well, but remember to line it with weed-suppressant membrane, which will keep the compost in place while allowing excess moisture to escape.
This compact cosmos has an especially strong scent. Treat it like a dahlia, cutting back the foliage in winter and storing the dormant tubers away from frost. Bought as small plants, the Chinese thalictrums will eventually get much taller. I decided to enjoy their beautiful leaf shapes and fluffy white flowers in a container before planting them in the border. Pennisetums are not always hardy so treat them as annuals or lift and overwinter under glass. Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Little Bunny’, a miniature version of ‘Hameln’ with pink-tinged, foxtail flowers, is another cultivar to try. Salvia ‘Nachtvlinder’ is a bushy salvia with single, sumptuous, hooded, purple flowers. Plant it out in late May and keep deadheading to encourage flowers throughout the summer. It can survive low temperatures in winter if mulched and not overwatered. Salvias take easily from cuttings, producing good-sized plants in a year. They prefer moist, well-drained soil in full sun.