How to Create a Chocolate Garden
A chocolate garden is fragrant with chocolate and cocoa scents. Some chocolate plants look brown, while others are bright colors with chocolate smells. Chocolate lovers can brush a plant to stir sweet memories of chocolates past. Follow these easy steps to bring chocolate plants into the garden. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Chocolate mint
- Chocolate cosmos
- Chocolate daisy
- Chocolate soldiers columbine
Instructions
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Start with the chocolate mint plant. Like other mints, it is easy to grow and spreads rapidly. Plant in full sun and water the plant periodically. It grows a foot or more in height and has light purple flowers. The smell is like a peppermint patty. Add this mint to tea or chop the leaves for flavoring chocolate deserts. Bees and butterflies like chocolate mint flowers.
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Add chocolate cosmos for deep burgundy flowers that smell like rich chocolate. This sun-loving perennial is native to Mexico. Make it a container plant and bring indoors for winter in cold climates. For year-round outdoors, plant in rich, well-drained soil. When the foliage dies back in autumn, cut back to two inches and protect from frost. The plant is for beauty and fragrance only and is not edible.
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Plant the chocolate daisy or chocolate flower for its strong morning fragrance of chocolate. The flower is native to Mexico and the southwestern United States. It is a leggy perennial up to 2 feet tall that may need to be staked. The bright yellow flowers have red stripes on the petal undersides. The flowers open before dawn and are most chocolate fragrant in early morning. The blooms fold up about noon and stay closed the rest of the day. Plant it in rich, well-drained soil that gets full sun.
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Search for chocolate soldiers columbine. This hardy perennial is not easy to find. The beautiful green and brown-flowered plant has a sweet fragrance and blooms for a long time in early summer. It is well suited to containers and borders because of its dwarf growing habits. This columbine grows to about a foot tall and needs semi-shade.
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Tips & Warnings
Do not plant chocolate vine. This woody perennial has been used as a ground cover or twining vine. The Asian plant has a chocolate-like fragrance. It is a vigorous grower and will crowd out native plants. It is invasive, growing 20 to 40 feet in one season, and adapts to many habitats.
Pet owners should not use cocoa mulch for the garden. It smells wonderful but is toxic to pets. Dogs are quickly attracted to it and can die as they like to eat the mulch. It contains theobromine and caffeine which are toxic to dogs.
- Photo Credit Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Courtesy of USDA
