You can grow chocolate in the home garden, chocolate colored flowers and vegetables, that is. Gardener’s tend to think of bright colored flowers and vegetables when planning a garden, but the velvety shades of chocolate brown these plants offer give a touch of whimsy and are perfect for use in a chocolate theme garden.
Here some unusual and easy to grow chocolate garden plants that you may have not heard of before that are great for home gardens:
Chocolate Tomatoes
Small, round and brown chocolate tomatoes are an alternative to red cherry tomatoes. They look like chocolate globes, but taste like tomatoes.
Chocolate Corn
Dark brownish-maroon colored ears of sweet corn that grow on maroon colored stalks. Chocolate corn is both edible (with the same flavor as sweet corn) and ornamental.
Chocolate Bell Peppers
The shiny brown skin on these bell peppers make them appear to be a confectionary concoction created from milk chocolate, but they are the real thing.
Chocolate Viola
This is an edible flower that looks like expensive chocolate. The brown shading on the petals fade from dark brown edges to a copper colored center.
Chocolate Sunflower
The chocolate sunflower grows and produces seed just like an average sunflower, but it produces chocolate-red blooms on a six foot tall green stalk.
Chocolate Hollyhock
Another tall growing flower that bears almost black colored flowers.
Chocolate Columbine
Chocolate columbine is a fragrant low-growing, mounding plant that will bear brown flowers that are great for cutting.
Chocolate Elephant Ear
A large and showy chocolate plant with large glossy leaves that are almost black. This chocolate plant, like an average green-leaved elephant ear, gives a garden a tropical look.
Chocolate Cosmos
Many gardener’s enjoy growing care-free cosmos in their gardens, chocolate cosmos is exactly the same as other cosmos varieties, it just bares deep colored burgundy-brown flowers.
Chocolate Dahlias
Chocolate dahlias come in both the low growing and tall growing varieties with deep reddish brown blooms born on the traditional green leafed stems.
Chocolate Pincushion
This annual flower looks exactly like it’s name. It’s a tall growing showy bloomer that can reach up to three feet and the chocolate colored flowers are great for cutting.
Chocolate Sweet Williams, dark brown daylilies, black irises, black tinted ferns, ground covers and ornamental grasses are also part of the vast number of chocolate garden plants.
If you want to get off the beaten garden path and grow something unusual, give some of these chocolate plants a home in your garden.