Why do you grow flowers? To attract pollinators and beneficial insects? For the sheer beauty? For cut flowers? To brighten your landscape with late-season color? To have some flowers for drying? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you need to add some easy-to-grow annual cosmos to your list of favorite plants.

Bees are important insects for our food sources. Seventy-five percent of our major food crops depend on pollination to mature, and bees are great pollinators. While honey bees are an important source of that pollination, and provide the added benefit of delicious honey, they are not the only bees that we enjoy here in Wisconsin.

Starting with seed catalogs, first determine if you need to order your seeds or if you can simply go to a local store and pick up what you need. If you are just buying a few things, are not particular about the variety, and only want seeds in the spring, ordering is likely not necessary. The Federal Seed Act of 1939 requires accurate labeling, purity standards, and minimum germination standards, so even smaller packets of cheaper seeds will produce similar results to more expensive seed packets in catalogs.