The hollyhocks mark high summer, punching through July and into the harvest month of August. Heaving the tarmacadam and springing up in the tiniest crack in the pavement of our nearby village, they run from the darkest plum red through pinks and off mauves, some with a dark eye that singles them out. When I was working at the Jerusalem Botanic Gardens for a year in the early eighties, it made all-at-once sense that they took to the Mediterranean climate, running out of control in the Eurasian section that pooled together plants from this incredible meeting point of Europe and Asia. There was an eccentric Englishwoman who had emigrated to Israel to immerse herself in the religious capital who volunteered in this section of the garden. Bathsheba would mostly be found sleeping in their shade rather than gardening, for they grew thick and tall to provide good cover and her relaxed approach to weeding probably contributed to their dominance in this area of the garden.

It was the first time I had seen them at home, where they were truly happy as pioneers and it recalibrated my association with them as a mainstay of the English cottage garden. They have probably become such a part of this relaxed form of gardening for being an interloper and for making do where there is space or a crack in a pavement. Being short-lived and plentiful with their flat disc shaped seed as a survival mechanism, they are adept at finding the chinks and in-between places. This is where Alcea do best, in a position where they can bask in sun all the way to the base and where the ground drains freely. Hollyhocks quickly fail where the soil lies wet and dwindle with less than six hours of direct sunlight a day, so their very requirements also bring a feeling of summer. They are as profligate with seed as they are promiscuous, so it is very much a pot-luck aesthetic, while their ability to soar without taking too much space at ground level gives even a small garden a feeling of generosity.