Grow A Chocolate Garden

TRENDSPOTTING | by DEBRA PRINZING

© DEBRA PRINZING

Sultry and seductive. Dark-leafed and flowering plants can be elegant and sophisticated, like this chocolate-tipped dahlia called ‘Karma Choc’ (right). They add drama to a container design or blend with complementary colors in a mixed border. For example, dark plants pair beautifully with chartreuse and lime-colored varieties. Other high-fashion plants have plum, deep purple, cinnamon and almost-black petals, leaves and blades. “People experience a primal response to chocolate,” says Marie Lincoln, owner of the Chocolate Flower Farm, a specialty nursery in Langley, Wash.. “It makes them happy.”

Almost good enough to eat. Some plants release a chocolate aroma, recalling memories of grandma pulling Nestle Toll House cookies from the oven. Chocolate-mint scented geranium (Pelargonium ‘Chocolate Peppermint’) and chocolate culinary mint (Mentha x piperata ‘Chocolate Mint’) smell delicious when you rub their leaves (the chopped leaves are delicious as a garnish for iced tea or lemonade). Tiny, daisy-like Chocolate Flower (Berlandiera lyrata), a night bloomer, releases its cocoa scent in the morning. The distinct candy-sweet fragrance is carried across the garden when a breeze sways through a massed planting of chocolate cosmos (Cosmos atrosanguineus).

Whether you see it or sniff it, eye-catching and mouth-watering chocolate plants create an avant-garde planting style you’ll want to sample: A sweet treat for the senses.