Hollyhocks

Everyone's favourite cottage garden flower

One of the self-seeded hollyhocks in my garden

I’m lucky: hollyhocks love my garden. When we moved here I brought seeds from plants in my previous garden (where I only had a handful of them) and they have multiplied a hundredfold to produce a proper thicket alongside the south-facing side of the house, flowering from now into August in a glorious mass of colour. From this central hub they have started to pop up in various corners of the garden: in the vegetable garden where seeds have dropped on the way to the compost heap, and in the cottage garden at the front of the house where they look completely at home. This year, after all the spring rain, they are taller than ever, some of them powering up to about 10 foot, threatening to obscure the view from my kitchen window. I prefer the single flowered hollyhocks to the frilly doubles, which aren’t so good for the pollinators. You can see pollen literally dripping out of the flowers on the single varieties and consequently lots of bees buzzing happily around.