Just a couple from a recent trip, but I think the patio shot with the statue is a lucky one.

Chocolate cosmos really do smell like chocolate!


And they rent out this lovely lawn area with the view of the Strait of Georgia for weddings and parties. In summer . . . perfect!

Lovely pictures.....I haven't been to British Columbia for years but I remember it as a wonderful place to garden.

Chocolate cosmos?! Never heard of them....sounds wonderful! Lovely pictures!

What a beautiful setting

I love chocolate cosmos. They are like a miniature dahlia, even have tubers that can be stored for winter

Oh, sigh. Something else to add to my wish list! Hmmm, go nice with Chocolate Royale salpiglossis!

Hmmm,I'd like to try that Chocolate cosmos.
Not to eat... to smell.
I have another chocolate fragrant bloom.
Berlandiera lyrata

I tried it down here in Florida, and it bloomed through spring but petered out and never was seen again once the nights got warm.

Thanks for the pictures.
I always am going to visit the Milner Gardens, but somehow I have not got to it.

Looks like a great place.

I want some chocolate cosmos too! That last shot is so pretty.

The Milner Gardens are on Vancouver Island near Parksville in British Columbia.

It is a lovely spot in a gorgeous part of Canada. I am originally from Vancouver, but had never heard of it until I visited my brother who lives near Parksville now.

I think if you can grow dahlias, you can grow that chocolate cosmos. Just my opinion, but I don't think it's really a cosmos at all.

They really do smell like chocolate, though.

Couple more of the garden tour - real cosmos, hydrangeas do very well there, and they made the old swimming pool into a water garden, but the water lilies were just barely getting started. It will be gorgeous in future years.

Aha! Found a brief article on Chocolate Cosmos....and it really is a cosmos! Cosmos atrosanguineus, according to WSU:
http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/home...

Yeah, that's what they called it, when I bought plants last year. But look at those leaves. Dahlia leaves. It even makes little tubers like dahlias.

I think some botanist mis-classified it, and they just haven't got around to looking at it again yet. It's no big deal, lovely plant I wish I could grow here . . .

I grow orchids now, and the crazy orchid gurus are changing classifications all the time on orchids.

dyzzypyxxy said:
I think some botanist mis-classified it, and they just haven't got around to looking at it again yet.

Oh, gasp! Surely not! That never happens!

Well I just read some disheartening information about Chocolate Cosmos (Cosmos atrosanguineus) It does not have viable seeds, it can only be grown by division, and it does have tubers like dahlias and has to be dug up in the winter. I have not overwintered anything indoors and probably won't start now.

But it certainly is pretty:)

Stunning place and beautiful garden.

Love the photographs but specially that Chocolate Cosmos but alas not for me. It will turn to fried chocolate in my heat. Failed with Dahlias also, rest of the world stores the tubers in winter but we have to save them in summers.
Regards,
Arif.

So right, Arif. It was not so much the heat, as my daughter can grow them in Utah, where it is very dry and they get over 100F for weeks in the summer. It is the humidity and warm nights that kills them.

I tried them in pots and in the ground, tried giving them an "artificial dormancy" so I could store the tubers in the cool over the summer, but they just disappeard no matter what I did.

Mine also vanish, I think they quietly dissolve and give up the ghost. Dahlias have become a kind of challenge for me but twenty miles and 1500 feet higher they grow wild. Some day I might solve the riddle of Dahlias and the climate I have, until then on ignored list.
Regards,
Arif.