Esteemed Member Of The English Cottage Garden...Allow Me To Present...The Hollyhock!

I don’t know about you, but hollyhocks take me back to my grandmother’s garden. I couldn’t tell you what she called them; I just can’t wrap my mouth around the word for “hollyhock” in Italian, but she loved them and so do I. In fact, there is probably a soft spot for this classic garden beauty in the heart of every gardener. If you think you’d like to plant a garden after the English cottage style, hollyhocks are an absolute must-have. Plant them along a fence, next to your shed, by the garage or at the back of the garden in the back of the border. Many gardeners plant dahlias and baby’s breath, Black-eyed Susans and mums in front of hollyhocks to “cover their shins.”

In addition to planting them at the back of the flowerbeds, they can be used as a screen to hide undesirable views. In fact, hollyhocks were once known as “outhouse flowers” because they were often planted to hide outhouses. A polite lady didn’t need to ask where the outhouse was – she just looked for the hollyhocks. Hollyhocks could be planted around children’s playhouses to make them a little more secluded. In fact, an ambitious gardener could use hollyhocks for the walls of a playhouse and perhaps runner beans to grow over the top for the roof. Ok, maybe I’m crazy, but it’s an interesting idea, you have to admit!

Hollyhocks are perennials or biennials depending on your climate. In zones 3 to 8, they may live over the following winter and bloom again if you cut the faded flower stalks off at the base, but it’s not guaranteed. In colder zones, you will want to mulch over the bases to protect from frost over the winter.

Flowers come in both single and double varieties. The blooms are carried on stems that can reach up to 8 feet tall depending on the variety. For more flower stalks, pinch out the growing tips once or twice early in the growing season. This will give you shorter plants with more branches. As they say, hollyhocks can get quite tall. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know that I’m interested in anything that requires a ladder in order to get those flowers into a vase! Hollyhock flowers open up like colorful saucers, up to 5 inches across! The double varieties look like large pom-poms. If you have children or grandchildren about, I’m sure you’ll find that they will love playing with these enormous blossoms. If you never made dolls from hollyhock flowers, you missed out on a wonderful childhood experience. The fully opened flowers are the skirts, half opened flowers are the torsos and the buds are the heads. Threading them onto a little stick holds them together.

While hollyhock flowers have no scent, bees and hummingbirds like to visit them.

Some gardeners insist that the ONLY way to start hollyhocks is indoors, in pots, in mid-February (in other words, RIGHT NOW!). If you choose this method, plant them about ½” deep in soil mix. The seeds will germinate at around 65 to 70 degrees. Check the pots often to make sure the soil doesn’t dry out, but be careful of over watering – these seeds rot easily. Seedlings should appear in about two weeks. Cut back on the water and let the soil dry out a bit between waterings. They like bright light otherwise they stretch and get quite gangly.

If you want blooms in the first year and are starting your seedlings indoors, some varieties for you to consider are Indian Spring, Happy Lights, Crème de Cassis and Summer Carnival. These are known for being rust resistant and for blooming the first year. However, I’m a lazy gardener and I prefer sowing right into the ground. Here in the Valley, the best time would be around mid-April.

Plant them in well-drained, neutral soil and make sure they get lots of sun. These plants don’t like shade! Feed in the spring with generous amounts of composted manure and continue feeding about every three weeks to once a month with fish emulsion.

When pruning, be sure to always leave a few spikes on the plant so they can set seeds and re-sow. You can also collect some of these seeds to share, when you become the envy of all your friends and neighbors with a knock-em-dead display of blooms.

Hollyhocks are prone to hollyhock rust. If you start to notice orange bumps or blisters on the leaves, pick off those leaves at once, put them in a bag and dispose of them – preferably off of your property. Do not compost those leaves; you’ll only be propagating the rust. Hollyhock rust is worse during wet summers, which we generally don’t have here in the Rogue Valley. Avoid overhead watering with your hollyhocks whenever possible. I always just pull of the rusty leaves and get rid of them. I’ll live with a little rust. If you don’t want hollyhock rust at all, then there are copper or Sulphur sprays you can use to prevent further infection. Obviously, if you’re using fungicides and pesticides, you shouldn’t let children play with the blossoms or around the plants themselves.

Hollyhocks also have a reputation for attracting bugs. I make a point of setting out extra ladybugs in their vicinity to control whatever it is that thinks living on my hollyhocks is the thing to do. Of course, if you’re using ladybugs, you shouldn’t be using pesticides. You could even set out a mantis egg case either right in or very close by your patch of hollyhocks. Mantids are great for controlling a large number of pests, plus they’re kind of fun. I had a really large one living in a wisteria vine on my back porch for a season and I think we got to be friends…but that’s a story for another time.