Enduring charm of stately blooms
With their old-fashioned charm and fluttering petals, colourful hollyhocks stand tall in the summer borders
THE STATUESQUE STEMS of hollyhocks stand sentinel in the borders of a quintessential English cottage garden in its mid to late summer prime. A timeless scene, the large, saucer-shaped blooms are abuzz with plump, fuzzy-haired bumblebees seeking out pollen and nectar in the warm August sunshine.
Encapsulating the romance and abundance of a traditional summer garden, hollyhocks have a comforting, old-fashioned charm. They also have a tendency to self-sow around the garden, making themselves at home in cracks and crevices in pavements and at the base of walls, which only adds to their appeal.
The regal stems generally reach to 7ft (2m) or more, and the rounded, heart-shaped, mid green foliage has a rough texture and runs the length of the stems; the larger leaves cover two thirds of the stem above the ground, the higher leaves gradually becoming smaller. Felted flower buds open to reveal concave blooms up to 4in (10cm) across, with ruffled-edged petals in shades of pink, yellow, peach, deep red and white. They cover the top third of the stem, and the lowest buds open first, with the first flowers unfurling in late June and the display continuing into September.
Rise and fall in popularity
A member of the mallow family, Malvaceae, the common hollyhock, Alcea rosea, has a long history of cultivation. Those grown in gardens today were introduced from China, it is thought, by way of the eastern Mediterranean, where they were possibly brought back to Europe by soldiers returning from the Crusades between the 11th and 13th centuries. Like other plants at the time, they were grown for the medicinal properties they were thought to have, rather than specifically for ornamental purposes.
Hollyhocks were said to cure chest complaints, and, as a result, they were mentioned in the herbals of the day, such as the father of British botany, William Turner’s A New Herbal, which was published in 1551. Their beauty had not gone unnoticed though, as their exquisite flowers were intricately captured in The Great Hours of Anne of Brittany, a magnificent 16th century illuminated manuscript created for Anne, Queen of France, in which they were referred to as ‘roses d’outre mer’, or ‘roses from overseas’.
Hollyhocks gradually became popular garden plants, and Henry Phillips, botanist and landscape gardener, devoted a whole chapter to them in his Flora Historica, published in
1824. They had, up until this point, escaped the attentions of enthusiastic amateur plant breeders, who had focused on creating new cultivars of plants, such as auriculas, tulips and dianthus, for the increasingly popular pastime of showing them at horticultural events.
As the genetics of hollyhocks had remained untouched in the mid 19th century, scientists, such as Charles Darwin and William Herbert, became intrigued by how true to type the offspring of hollyhocks were, even when grown close to other varieties, so they were able to use them to study the science of plant breeding.
At the same time, plant breeders decided to ‘enhance’ the beauty of the single-flowered hollyhocks, which were not considered fancy enough for Victorian tastes. The resulting frilly, multi-petalled doubles proved popular until a fungal disease arrived in Britain from South America. Puccinia malvacearum, more commonly known as hollyhock rust, causes orange-red spots to form on the leaves, which become disfigured and wither. Eventually, the leaves die and fall from the stems, and in severe cases, the whole plant is affected and dies. This airborne fungal disease devastated hollyhocks in Victorian gardens across the country in a short space of time.
Up until this point, hollyhocks had been grown as short-lived perennials, but it was realised that if they were treated instead as biennials and removed from the garden after flowering in their second year, the impact of rust could be controlled to some degree.
Unfortunately, the problems caused by rust meant hollyhocks had fallen out of favour with Victorian gardeners and nurserymen, and it took until the turn of the 20th century for interest in these plants to be rekindled, when doyenne of Edwardian gardening Gertrude Jekyll featured them in her planting schemes, embracing their towering height at the back of deep-filled herbaceous borders. ›
Matthew Arnold, ‘The Strayed Reveller’
“all around The boundless, waving grass-plains stretch, thick-starr’d With saffron and the yellow hollyhock”
John Ruskin
“There is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of cathedrals”
Growing conditions
Hollyhocks do best in full sun in a sheltered spot, in moist, but well-drained, soil that is moderately fertile. Plenty of air circulation around the plants can also help to control the impact of rust; often the healthiest hollyhocks are those that have self-sown in seemingly inhospitable nooks and crannies at the base of south- or west-facing walls, so those in borders should be given space and not crowded by other plants.
While hollyhocks are technically short-lived perennials, surviving for four to five years before running out of steam and needing to be replaced, they are generally grown as biennials, as rust tends to attack the larger leaves of more mature plants. As biennials, they will put on leafy growth and roots in the first year, then, in the second year, they will flower and set seed, after which they can be pulled out. To collect the seed or to allow the plants to self-seed, the cutting back of the flowering stems should be delayed until the seedpods have dried.
During the growing season, it is important to keep on top of rust by checking the undersides of the leaves for orange-brown spots. Infected leaves should be removed as soon as they are spotted, but they should not be put on the compost heap: it is better to burn them or put them in the green waste recycling, where the higher composting temperatures will kill off the fungal spores. It is also important to clear away and destroy any fallen leaves in late summer and autumn to prevent the fungal spores overwintering in the soil.
Some hollyhocks are less susceptible to rust, such as the fig leaf hollyhock, Alcea ficifolia, and the Halo Series, or the hybrid cross x Alcalthaea suffrutescens, which is a cross between a mallow and hollyhock. Rust tends to be worse in wet, humid conditions, so for gardens in the damper west of Britain, these are a good option.
Hollyhocks are easy to grow from seed, and if sown early, in February, with extra warmth provided by a heated propagator, it is possible to have flowers in the first year. But for more robust plants and taller flower stems, it is recommended to sow in mid spring to flower the following year. The seeds are large, so easy to handle, but to speed up germination, it is a good idea to soak them overnight in water to soften the outer casing of the seed. They are then sown into trays filled with multipurpose compost, covering the seeds with a fine dusting of compost or vermiculite. ›
The young seedlings should be pricked out when they have two sets of leaves and potted up into individual 9cm pots, with the compost kept moist, but not overwatered.
By June, the plants should be large enough to be planted out into their final homes in the garden, watering them in to help them establish.
Species hollyhocks
There is also a selection of species hollyhocks, which are much less widely grown, but are just as pretty and have a good level of resistance to rust. A. ficifolia has delicate, crêpe paper-like blooms in pale yellow, pink, white and red, and has distinctive fig-shaped leaves. A. pallida is a rarely grown species from Turkey, which has graceful, scallop-edged petals in a pretty rose pink, on tall stems up to 6ft (2m) tall. It will flower in the first year if sown in late winter. A. nudiflora grows wild in the mountains of North West China and Kazakhstan, and has exquisite white flowers, each with a pale lemon yellow centre and ruffled edges to the petals. It is shorter than most hollyhocks, growing to approximately 32in (81cm), which makes it a good choice for exposed gardens and for planting in the middle of a border. There is also A. rugosa, known as the Russian hollyhock, which has primrose-yellow flowers.
Whether choosing a more unusual species or a classic variety, hollyhocks will add drama, willowy beauty and a jolly sense of informality to a cottage garden throughout the summer months.