Welcome to the Gardner's World magazine's Sewalong series, the podcast that inspires you to grow more from seed.

Hi, I'm Adam, and I love growing cosmos from seed.

I think they're one of those flowers that everyone should actually have in the garden.

They're easy to grow and reliable, and they reward you with weeks of beautiful flowers that fit into lots of different planting styles.

Whether you're new to gardening or you're looking to add a bit of extra colour to your borders,

opening up a packet of Cosmos is a great place to start.

Cosmos are native to Mexico and the plant was first cultivated by Spanish priests in their mission gardens from the 16th century and later they were brought to Spain where they became known as peasants' flowers

because of their ability to grow in the poor soils surrounding the peasant cottages.

The name Cosmos itself derives from the Greek word cosmos, which means order or harmony or the world.

And they've perhaps been named because of how evenly placed

and orderly the petals themselves are and the flower eventually made its way to England in 1789

thanks to the wife of the English ambassador to Spain at the time and it has since become a beloved

garden staple.

Now there are a lot of varieties out there, but they all share a few common traits.

They pretty much all have very delicate, feathery foliage and tall, graceful stems that wave about in the breeze,

often dancing up above the other plants in a mixed border. And then, of course,

there are the flowers themselves, bright, daisy-like blooms in really happy shades of white and pink

and deep crimson. And if you're going for cut flowers in the garden, Cosmos are ideal. The more

you pick, the more they seem to produce. If I've convinced you to give them a go,

then you're going to want to know how to grow them from seed, and they are pretty straightforward.

You've got a few options, depending on how early you want to start. You can sell them directly

outside in late spring, or you can saw them indoors in pots from March onwards,

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