Health & Fitness
Cosmos Adds the Color of the Southwest to North Fork Gardens
Sometimes we discover that 'Old Faithfuls' in the garden actually have exotic roots.
Nothing like a sunny day in the garden. While our North Fork shadows and showers make for easier weeding, intense and full noon sun bathes the leaves and flowers in shimmering waves of heat and light---worth slavering on the sunblock to experience and enjoy.
We North Fork folk pride ourselves on our cosmopolitan, varied ethnic cultures. That includes not just food and customs, but our gardens. One beloved perennial that gives our flower beds a warm and golden glow, Cosmos or C. sulphureus, actually got its start in the American Southwest and Mexico. Now it is a hardworking staple in the North Fork garden, with a blooming season from spring through late summer. Easy to grow, the Wildseed Farms website gives it an 80 percent success rate. In a gardening world with some very interesting but finicky hybrids, I like those very down-home, no-nonsense odds. Butterflies love the hot pink and mauve varieties. Cosmos also comes in white-white [known as ‘psycho’, for whatever reason] and a number of two-tone and mottled color combinations.
Moral of the story? I guess maybe it's unfortunate that we sometimes take the richness of our garden's history for granted. We learn a lot when we dig not just into the ground, but into the roots and origins of the plants that give us so much pleasure, day in and day out.
