| By Jay White
Contributing Writer |
I have a “thing” for tall plants. I don’t know where it comes from, but if you look around my house it is undeniable. Each year I grow things like castor beans (this year’s castor bean grew more than 12’ tall), sunflowers (mammoth and Maximilion), cleome and hollyhocks.
Over the past few years I have tried to create what I call a cottage garden in the beds that surround my house. This has been a pretty simple task since the term “cottage garden” is one of those phrases that can mean a hundred different things to a hundred different gardeners. To me, cottage simply means beds that are full of “old timey” plants of different sizes and textures that tumble together to provide a natural look. My cottage garden is full of roses of all shapes and colors, passalong irises and daylilies, asters, petunias and honeysuckle. However, in my mind, my cottage garden is not complete unless it is “dotted” with hollyhocks every spring.
The garden style we now call “cottage” came to maturity in England during the 1870s. While the roots of the cottage garden go back much further, the technical form arose as a protest to the elegantly designed and maintained gardens of the English gentry. Typically gardens of the English working class, the cottage style emphasized tough plants that required little care. Self-seeding annuals, vines, bulbs and long-lived perennials were used to create spaces that tumbled together to give a lush, full appearance.
Since they are so tough and so reliable, hollyhocks have been a huge part of the cottage form since its beginning. Not only are they large, lovely spring-blooming plants that are covered in large, colorful blooms, they also reseed with abandon. Once you get hollyhocks started, you really will have them forever.
History
People all across the world have grown and loved hollyhocks for a very long time. Thanks to the success of the cottage-garden style, many people think of hollyhocks as English plants. While they have been grown there for a very long time, their original roots grew in places that were very far away from the British Isles. The English got their first hollyhock seeds from knights who were returning from the crusades. While in the Holy Land, the crusaders found that this plant had a wide range of medicinal uses. One of these uses was to sooth their horses’ sore hooves. The popularity of this horse hock salve was so popular that many believe it gave rise to one of the first recorded names of this plant: “holy hock.”
Because the Holy Land was the source of the hollyhocks that were grown in Europe, many assumed that they originated there. However, hollyhocks were grown in the Far East long before the crusaders made their way to the Middle East. Some ancient Japanese shoguns used the hollyhock as a symbol of their clans. In fact, the hollyhock is so entwined in Japanese history that the City of Kyoto holds an annual hollyhock festival and a Japanese soccer club uses the hollyhock as its mascot.
Uses
Today, it is safe to say that most of us grow hollyhocks for their ornamental value. While their stunning stalks and flowers have made them favorites of many generations of floral gardeners, it is their medicinal value that most appealed to the earliest growers. Over the centuries, salves and teas made from different parts of the plant were used to cure everything from sniffles to gonorrhea.
Hollyhocks are members of the mallow family (Malvaceae). This family includes okra, cotton, the shrub Althea (Rose of Sharon) and hibiscus. The flowers of this family are edible and some folk remedies suggest making a tea out of them to treat “throat problems” and digestive issues, such as diarrhea. Through the years mallow teas have been used to treat coughs, fevers and sore throats. Salves made from the flowers and roots have been touted to cure eczema, soothe burns and rapidly heal wounds.
Medicinal value aside, hollyhocks are now grown because they are such great ornamental plants. With their tall upright stalks and big showy flowers, hollyhocks are the perfect plant for the back of a cottage bed or border. They are also great specimen plants to bring attention to a gate or entryway and they are great when used to soften a long straight line of fence.
Since they grow so tall (some varieties grow more than 10 feet tall), they are often used as screens in the garden. Like many gardeners in the 1920s, my grandmother grew hollyhocks to “hide” the outhouse. According to my Aunt Sarah, camouflaging the outhouse was not the only thing they were used for at my grandmother’s home. She loves to tell the story of how she once made her older brother so mad that he pulled up a hollyhock and gave her a spanking with it. That must have been quite a spanking because she often says that even though 70 years have passed, she still can’t forgive my uncle or the hollyhock for what happened that afternoon.
Growing
Because of their adaptability, hollyhocks are grown all over the U.S. While they thrive in the hot and humid South, they also do very well in some pretty arid places. In Taos, New Mexico, the flower is so common that the local garden club has adopted it as the official flower of their club and their city. In Taos, the hollyhock is called Los Varas de San Jose (the staff of Joseph). According to legend, St. Joseph chose the hollyhock as his staff because the plant’s ability to grow in all climates and soils showed God’s love and mercy for all of mankind. I don’t know if that is true, but I do know that no matter where you live there is a variety of hollyhock that will grow for you.
Technically, the hollyhock is classified as a biennial. That means that, just like a carrot, you plant the seeds the first year and then you don’t get blooms until the second. That might be true in some places, but here in Texas they grow just like any other annual. Because of their popularity, horticulturists have created an impressive array of flower types and colors (even black) that will grow in all types of soils. An old garden tip says that plants with deep-colored flowers prefer sandy soils, while the pinks, whites and other lighter colors prefer a clay soil. So, wherever you live, there is a variety of this flower that will do well.
If you are planning on growing from seeds, hollyhocks should be planted in September, October or November (if you live south of I-10). They prefer full sun but can tolerate some light shade. They can also survive temperatures in the teens for short periods. Hollyhocks are heavy feeders, so they do best in a bed that is well worked with organic material. They are also fairly drought tolerant but do require at least an inch of water per week to be fully productive.
To plant the seeds, drag a rake over your prepared soil and then scatter your seeds on the surface. Once down, lightly cover with soil. The seeds require some sunlight for germination to occur. Germination from seed usually takes 7 to 14 days. Once the little plants are up, thin them to a foot between each plant. Hollyhock sprouts are very attractive little clumps of leaves, so you may be hesitant to thin them. Don’t be. Hollyhocks will grow into very large plants. If you grow them too close together they will not grow as big or flower as prolifically. Plus, plants that do not have “air space” around them are much more susceptible to rust.
As I mentioned before, once you get your first hollyhocks established, you will have them forever. These plants are great re-seeders. The term “great re-seeder” is often a code word for invasive. While I would not call my hollyhocks invasive, they do tend to “travel” throughout my garden. I started my hollyhocks in a back corner of my potager and they have now spread all over the garden. In order to “control” their spread, I now leave my hollyhocks in the ground until they are almost completely brown. Then, I pull up the entire stalk and lay it on the ground wherever I want next year’s stand to be. Then, I just sprinkle a little garden soil on top of the dead stalk and let nature do the rest.
If you want to grow your hollyhocks from transplants, it is best to plant them in the fall. Since hollyhocks are cold hardy down to the teens, most varieties will do fine in our winter. If you want to plant your hollyhocks in the spring, buy them as soon as you see them in the nurseries. Transplants planted in late February and early March will have enough time to develop the root system required to build a big healthy plant.
Rust
If you grow hollyhocks you will eventually get rust. Rust is a common name for a large group of fungi that attack plants. The spores of this fungus are airborne and very difficult to control. Rust is very easy to identify. The first signs of rust are little “rusty-colored” specks on the underside of the leaves. These specks will gradually turn into bumps that will eventually spread to the front of the leaf as the infestation intensifies.
The best way to control rust is to try and prevent it. Rust thrives in a moist environment. Because of this, you want to allow plenty of airspace around your plants. This will keep the humidity down and help wet plants dry out. Avoid watering your hollyhocks from above. Wet hollyhock foliage invites rust quicker than anything else. To avoid wetting the foliage use a drip system or soaker hoses. Also add a thick layer of mulch around the base of your plants. The mulch helps keep the soil evenly moist (which hollyhock loves) and it will reduce the chance of splashing spore-infested soil up onto the plant.
Rust usually attacks the lowest layer of leaves first. As soon as you see the first spots, remove the leaves with a sharp pair of shears and throw them in the trash. Do not compost them as the rust spores will be released from the pile. If your plant has a serious infestation, you can use a fungicidal spray that contains chlorothalonil, mancozeb, myclobutanil or trifloxistrobin. If chemical sprays are not your thing, many organic gardeners rely on neem oil or common baking soda mixed with horticultural oil for rust control.
If controls do not work you have a couple of choices. First, you can let it go. Most rust infestations will not kill the plant. So even if you have ugly, spotted foliage, the stalks will usually still produce flowers. However, I don’t recommend doing this. Rust spores are fairly persistent (they can live in soil up to 3 years). If you allow a plant that is infested with rust to die and fall to the ground, millions of tiny spores will get into your soil and stay there, waiting for you to splash them back onto the leaves of next year’s crop.
Hollyhocks aren’t the only plants in your garden that are susceptible to this pest. All plants in the mallow family (okra, hibiscus and althea) are highly susceptible. Asters, snap dragons and roses in the rugosa family can all fall victims to this pest. Because of this, if your hollyhocks get a good infestation, it is best to pull out the infected plants and throw them away. It is also recommended that you not replant susceptible plants in the rust-infected area for three years.
Old fashioned plants like hollyhocks make me pretty sentimental. I love knowing that every fall I wait and watch for the appearance of the same heart-shaped leaves that my grandmother did. Each time I see a stand of these big showy flowers I think of hidden outhouses and a spanking that happened more than 70 years ago. These plants connect to my past more than any other. Evidently, I am not the first man to wax sentimental about the hollyhock. In 1917, Edgar Guest released a poem called “Hollyhocks.” It expresses how I feel about these stately antiques much better than I can so I leave you with it now.
HOLLYHOCKS
Old-fashioned flowers! I love them all:
The morning-glories on the wall,
The pansies in their patch of shade,
The violets, stolen from a glade,
The bleeding hearts and columbine,
Have long been garden friends of mine;
But memory every summer flocks
About a clump of hollyhocks.
The mother loved them years ago;
Beside the fence they used to grow,
And though the garden changed each year
And certain blooms would disappear
To give their places in the ground
To something new that mother found,
Some pretty bloom or rosebush rare —
The hollyhocks were always there.
It seems but yesterday to me
She led me down the yard to see
The first tall spires, with bloom aflame,
And taught me to pronounce their name.
And year by year I watched them grow,
The first flowers I had come to know.
And with the mother dear I’d yearn
To see the hollyhocks return.
The garden of my boyhood days
With hollyhocks was kept ablaze;
In all my recollections they
In friendly columns nod and sway;
And when to-day their blooms I see,
Always the mother smiles at me;
The mind’s bright chambers, life unlocks
Each summer with the hollyhocks.
— By Edgar A. Guest
