Alcea, Double Hollyhock, Garden Hollyhock 'Chater's Double Mix'

I have problems with snails and caterpillars eating my hollyhocks. I don't kill any bugs in my yard so I just try to get things that are...Read Moren't affected by bugs. But with hollyhocks, I just remove the snails when I see them on the plant and they tend to eat just the leaves; the flowers are still beautiful. With the caterpillars, it's kind of a "glass half full" deal. On the one hand, they eat the leaves and spin their cocoons inside the leaves (and sometimes the buds) but, on the plus side, you get butterflies. Sometimes, I collect the caterpillars and bring them inside in a jar to watch them turn into butterflies. Then I release them outside and it makes the damage they do to my hollyhocks worth it.

Absolutely beautiful blooms...and easy to grown. Mine didn't bloom the first year but wowed me this year. :-D BTW, the seeds are very h...Read Moreearty and require little work -- just drop in a pot with moist soil and "viola"!

These are beautiful. I had mine in clay soil, 6 hours of sun a day, no additional water and they seemed very happy. I grew them from seed...Read More that I scattered on the ground in early fall the year before. Too bad I only had red and pink sprout, I would have liked to see the other colors.

I did have to tie some to the plants to a chain-link fence because they started to bend. The flowers are very full and heavy. Plant them in the back because the low foliage gets ratty by the end of the year. They will self-seed unless you deadhead.

I have grown these hollyhocks for about forty years. I would save the seeds from year to year, and then plant them along my garage in Sh...Read Moreafter, California. Unfortunately, sometimes a gopher would find the roots and eat my plants from the bottom. I also planted them in Riverside, California, behind the apartment building I was living in. Now, they come up here and there and wherever they want to...I enjoy that! I have also seen them growing near a farmhouse on one of the Channel Islands off the coast of Ventura and Santa Barbara. Bees love them...I do, too!