Cosmos Sensation Mixed

The benchmark. Large single flowers, 8 to 10cm, in the full range of pinks, whites and carmines on stems of 90 to 120cm, and no other plant in a cutting patch produces this many stems per square metre.

It holds an RHS Award of Garden Merit, and it is the one to give a beginner, because it is close to unkillable given sun and poor soil. Sow in spring, plant out after the frosts, keep cutting, and it will supply a household with flowers from July until the frosts finish it in November.

Two notes on the mix. You get what you get, since there is no sorting by colour before the buds open, and the deep carmine tends to be the most vigorous, so a self-seeded colony drifts towards magenta within a few years. Pull the ones you do not want while they are small. And here is the standard cosmos warning again, because it is the thing that goes wrong most often: do not feed it, and do not plant it in good soil. Rich ground gives you a huge leafy plant and almost no flowers.