08/26/2026
🌿 Evening Garden Ramble: Let’s Talk Celosia
Celosia. ❤️
If you had seen me trying to grow this plant when I first started, you probably wouldn’t believe I grow what you see in this picture today. 😂
This is probably my seventh year growing celosia, and let me tell you, the first couple years were not pretty. Epic fails would probably be a fairly accurate description. I had entire sections of garden space dedicated to celosia that produced very little worth cutting. For probably the first two years, I questioned whether I was just wasting perfectly good growing space.
But here’s something about me, if I really like a plant, I don’t give up on it just because I’m not good at growing it yet.
I research it.
I watch it.
I read what other growers are doing. I look at what worked for them, what didn’t, and then I pay attention to what happens right here in my gardens.
Every growing season becomes another experiment.
Celosia taught me that it really loves heat and sunshine. It wants warm soil, good drainage and consistent moisture without sitting wet. It absolutely does not appreciate cold, and rushing it outside before the weather has truly warmed up has never done me any favours.
Spacing and airflow matter too, and over the years I’ve learned that where I plant it, when I plant it and how I manage it can make a huge difference in the stems I get.
And I still don't have every variety completely figured out!
Some grow beautifully for me. Others decide they would rather stay six inches tall and humble me for another season. 😂 That's gardening.
But after years of experimenting, celosia has finally gone from something that regularly wasted garden space to something I can grow quite successfully and I am so glad I didn't give up on it.
Because LOOK AT IT. 😍
Celosia is one of my favourite flowers to add to bouquets. The texture is incredible, the colours can be ridiculously rich, and those big feathery plumes add something completely different from your typical garden flower.
And the bonus?
Celosia dries beautifully.
If you're drying it, though, remove the foliage first. Don't hang a big leafy stem and expect everything to dry nicely. Strip those leaves, bundle the stems loosely and hang them upside down somewhere dry, dark and well ventilated. The flowers can hold their colour amazingly well.
At the end of the season I love making dried arrangements for myself and a few clients so that when January comes around and everything outside is buried under snow, we still have a little piece of the summer garden inside. ❤️
I've also seen dried celosia incorporated into wreaths and other everlasting floral work, and someday I might have to experiment with that too.
This flower has definitely taught me one of my favourite lessons about gardening:
Your first failure doesn't mean you can't grow something. Sometimes it just means you haven't learned how to grow it yet.
Seven years later, I'm still learning.
And I'll probably still be learning seven years from now.
That's gardening. 🌱❤️
