Cosmos
Cosmos bipinnatus
An easy, airy annual with lacy leaves and pink, white or maroon daisies from early summer to frost, lovely for cutting and a magnet for butterflies, and it often reseeds itself. It thrives in lean, sunny ground, so skip the fertilizer. Tall kinds may need staking or shelter in windy spots.
- Mature size
- 3 × 2.5 ft
- 0.9 × 0.8 m, tall × wide
- Hardiness
- Zones 2a–11a
- USDA
- Sun
- Full sun to part shade
- Water
- Dry to medium
- Blooms
- Jun–Oct
Cosmos at its mature size
A mature Cosmos grows 2 to 4 feet tall and 2 to 3 feet wide.
Drawn to scale beside a 5 ft 9 in person. With VeraScape, you see it at this size in your own yard.
Typical mature size, unpruned. Sources: Missouri Botanical Garden, NC State Extension.
Through the year
What Cosmos looks like month by month in a typical zone 6–7 garden.
Below ground · Nov–Apr
Not in the ground: planted after the last frost, pulled after the first.
In leaf · May–Oct
Airy bush of lacy leaves with pink, magenta and white saucer-shaped daisies.
Photos
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Growing Cosmos
- Grows well in
- The Northeast, the Southeast, the Midwest, the Plains and Mountain West, the desert Southwest, the Pacific Northwest, and California.
- Growth rate
- Fast
- Good for
- Drought tolerant, pollinators, and fast growing
- Native to
- Mexico
Spacing
VeraScape spaces plants so their grown canopies just touch. For Cosmos, that’s about 2.5 ft apart, center to center.
Place a row in your own yard and VeraScape spaces them at their mature width, so you can see whether they’ll crowd the walk.
See Cosmos in your yard before you dig
Visualize it at its true size, alongside the rest of your design.