It’s a simpler bunch this week. I knew I was pushing my luck but I grew two lots of celosia in the cutting garden this year, a ‘normal’ plumed type and a cristate or cockscomb variety. Read any tropical blog and they will tell you how amazingly easy celosias are but here in temperate Ireland they struggle to grow and although both were supposed to reach 1m high they have barely reached a third of that. But each one has produced a plume of flowers. I know that these are some of the most controversial flowers I have posted about because some people really hate celosias and I can understand why but for some reason I really like them. And they make good cut flowers (as long as you like the look of them). Because I don’t really have enough to pick a bunch of just one colour at a time and had to pick a mixture the companion plant had to be fairly neutral – although the celosias clash anyway. I can imagine these growing everywhere in some Indian garden where they would happily clash with vivid saris on the washing line but they are a bit fearsome for a gentle Irish landscape! Anyway, it fell to the increasingly useful panicum ‘Frosted Explosion’ to step up to the mark as the contrast.

Somehow the smoky, mistiness of the panicum seems appropriate with the ‘flames’ of the celosia.

celosia, cockscomb, panicum frosted explosion