Cosmos Double Click Rose Bon Bon

Fully double pompoms in vintage rose-pink, packed with ruffled petals into rounded heads up to 8cm across and no central disc showing at all. Put beside a standard cosmos it is hard to believe they are the same species. This one reads as a small peony.

That is the point of it. It gives you peony volume in the first summer from a spring sowing, rather than the three or four years an actual peony wants, and it keeps producing from July into November.

Two honest things. Double cosmos strains do not come one hundred per cent double, and a proportion of your plants will throw semi-doubles and the odd plain single, so sow more than you need and keep the best. And a fully double flower has petals where the nectar should be, so it is of little use to bees; grow some single cosmos alongside if pollinators matter to you. As with all cosmos, lean ground and no feeding. Rich soil gives you a great deal of leaf and very few of these.