About this variety
Our own blend, picked from the hollyhocks we grow and trial here at Salle Moor Hall Farm. It deliberately mixes the heavy ruffled Chater's doubles with open single saucers, in soft lemon, crimson, apple-blossom pink, white and near-black chocolate-maroon, on spires of 1.8 to 2.2m.
Including both flower forms is not an accident. The doubles are the showpieces and the singles are the ones bumblebees can actually get into, so a mixed row gives you the display and does something useful at the same time.
Now the thing every hollyhock grower has to deal with. Rust is more or less inevitable, and it will cover the lower leaves in orange pustules by midsummer. It disfigures rather than kills. Water at the base rather than over the leaves, give the plants air, and strip the worst leaves off as they go. Treat them as a two-year crop and start fresh plants each year rather than nursing old ones along.
The stems and leaves are bristly and irritate sensitive skin, so wear gloves.
