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.

Hollyhocks flower in the second year from seed and, if cut to the base immediately after flowering, can be encouraged to come back perennially for the next two to three years. Though most vigorous and healthy in their first and second years, Alcea rosea are sadly prone to rust, which will defoliate them entirely as the plants age and have less vigour. Ultimately, and despite their ease and fast turnaround, you have to put up with the rust if you want hollyhocksm, but Alcea rugosa, the Russian Hollyhock, is far less susceptible.

I have grown Alcea rugosa in several gardens now. Not in an unbroken line since I first discovered it, but as it is so easy from seed, as a vertical you can depend upon for their immediacy in a new planting. The leaf, which is deeply indented remains healthy for its three to four happy years and in that time they will have gently seeded. Enough to replace the original plants and usually into a place on the edge where a vertical feels accentuated. You always need fewer than you might think, for they are a strong presence and will take up the equivalent space of a standing person in a border.

We grew them for over a decade in our Peckham garden, where they appeared with evening primroses and never once made us feel that we were in a cottage garden. This is probably down to the purity of the yellow flower, which is reliably a sharp primrose, avoiding the sweet abandon of the mixed A. rosea. The clear yellow is a light catcher and this is your first and immediate impression when you meet them down by the barns. They grow here in the rubbly ground amongst self-seeding Eryngium giganteum ‘Miss Willmott’s Ghost’ and Origanum laevigatum ‘Herrenhausen’, taking the baton from Thalictrum flavum subsp glaucum in both height and colour. I introduce a handful of pot-grown seedlings every couple of years to define where I want the height and, when they find their own position, leave those seedlings that will not dominate to add to the informality.

Words: Dan Pearson | Photographs: Huw Morgan

Published 3 August 2024