Come Stroll is about Hibiscus & Mallows for hot weather blooms.

Excellent article, Maggie. My hardy hibiscis are from the old farm. My mother had planted them on the NE side of the house, and they rarely bloomed. I dug up one plant, divided it into 4, and planted here at the new farm. Last year, the grasshoppers ate all the blooms before they opened, as well as the leaves, etc. However, I suppose with a year's added strength in the root systems, this year the hoppers have pretty much left them alone, and I've enjoyed their flowers all summer.

Your hibiscus and mallows are gorgeous, Maggie.

Thanks guys, that's really nice to hear! I guess they are a sort-a surrogate for clematis to me!
Does yours re-seed Caro? and what color is the bloom?

a. I don't know; I divide the plant itself.

b. White with red center.

I particularly like the wild yellow derivative and of course the sinensisis a beauty. What I like about your articles, Maggie, is you dig deeper than I tend to, and always provide me with new and interesting info.

Terry, are your hibiscis winter hardy, or do you have to bring them in for the winter?

There's a shrub that I knew as "althea" or "Rose of Sharon" when my mother grew it years ago. It's Hibiscus syriacus, and it's winter hardy. The hybridizers have been busy. Blooms are getting bigger and showier, although they still can't match the hot-climate hibiscus.

Carolyn, I'm happy to report that my Hibiscus is totally unaffected by the winter, I don't have any Hibiscus. J
I believe the syriacus are hardy here, but slow to bloom and failing completely in a poor summer such as we've just had.

Sorry Terry. I misunderstood. Now I get it that you were referring to Maggie's pics, rather than your own plants. Oops.

Susan, I just love althea. It grows well in this area. I have always had it at previous abodes, however, didn't find what I was looking for this spring, so still don't have it here. That situation will be remedied next year for sure!

I have 2 tropical hibiscis. One Maggie gave me, but I forgot to get the name (hello Maggie....the purple leaf one), and another I bought that wasn't labelled. Its got dark red buds, but they are drying out and falling off before they open. Don't know if something is eating them or if its the heat.

I so wanted to include that burgundy leafed one in on Aug Come Strudel Caro, but this is the first year I have had it, so I always hesitate to cover something I haven't had enough history with. That's always the foundation for my articles. Also, it hasn't bloomed yet and some of them are 9 FEET TALL! Other folks have told me they have never had one bloom, so our season may be too short (hard to imagine!) for them to mature to bloom stage here. It is meant to have a red flower that is used in 'Red Zinger' tea. A friend brought me a huge bag of dried red hibiscus blooms from Mexico a few years ago that I suspect is from the same plant. She called them 'Jimaca Flowers'(the Spanish J prounced as an H,,for Jamaica?) They brewed up a beautiful red iced tea - very tasty when sweetened. She said it is known in Mexico as a 'diet tea' - if you want to loose water weight i.e. it is a diuretic! The one I gave you Caro is tender, so root some cuttings before first frost to keep it going. I shall try to keep one going in the greenhouse in hopes of it maturing to bloom.

I also have another fab hibiscus that blooms later on in the year. It is the 'Confederate Rose' Hibiscus multibilis with incredibly multi-petaled double blooms change from white to pink to dark with age.

About the althea H. syriacus Susan, here are the ones I grow:
update 2001
Come Stroll July 2001

The burgundy-leafed hibiscus' from above note are the tall dark and handsome guys towards the back of the border. That's what I call a serious annual!

Pretty pic, but the hibiscis turned out too purple. They really are burgandy-colored.

I look at that pic and can't believe you have problems with Clematis, the shrubs/conifers to the right are just crying out for them.

Terry, don't you think a couple of months of 110-117 degrees might have something to do with it? Even with watering daily, I've had plants that looked ok in the morning and were yellow, dry and dead by evening! Wish I'd had a time-lapse camera set on them. I suppose they literally bake.

I don't know how you can garden with anything other than cacti in those temperatures, if I wore a hat I would take it off to all you Texan gardeners.

I have a LOT of SHADE or I would not get through the Summer!!!!!!!!Of course it is hard to gareden in the Texas shade too!!!!!!!

It can be very frustrating. But if you can keep the plants alive in the summer, the usually long autumn is worth it. Then, with the also usually long spring, if you don't get hailed out, everything is quite lovely then too. We have verrry violent weather here.

The worst storms I remember followed absolutely gorgeous, cloudless days. In the evening, the thunderheads would start to build, and within a very short while....rain, hail, tornadoes. AND it usually happens just when the garden is looking great.

Is this burgundy-better Caro? ;-)
There is a wonderful 5ft. zebra grass behind it somewhere. I'll have to remember to switch those two around next year!

Maybe this is better

Maggie your Garden always looks so wonderful!!!! My yard is luckly just to get WATERED!!!!I know you are out there all the time......and it SHOWS!!Carolyn please don't try this at your house....you would have to put out large lights so you could work at it ALL night long....Between all the chores,family,animals and just country life you would never have enough time?????Or would you??? I know I don't......

I'm glad you think so David, thanks! But...Pshaw David!...I'm not able to be out there as much I'd like to. Some weeks I get to spend several mornings in the garden (sometimes sitting more than toiling :-), but not EVERYDAY for sure! Some mornings I only get to stroll around to notice everything that NEEDS doing! This week I groomed the herb beds and driveway, thinned the weeping mulberries, sprayed all the beds with liq food, deadheaded in back yard for about an hour and watered the pot plants almost every morning. That comes to 7 or 8 hrs. for the week. 'Course keeping it composted and mulched and other healthy stuff really cuts down on a lot of otherwise-maintenance. I used to spend the summers moving sprinklers around and now even that has been taken care by my what-would-have-been-a-trip-to-England-new-watersprinkler system. If I was out there everyday, I wouldn't always be so very behind on need-to-dos & groomings. And if I would just stop putting in new plants, which requires ripping out the old ones, there would be a lot more sitting than digging ;-)

Terry, if you gardened in Texas, you would be wearing a hat - for shade ;-) What you said about clems up the pine tree - its that Afghan one that grows in chalk and that top of the border is almost solid lime stone and caliche chalk and boulders under all the stuff I keep putting in there - soil, compost, mulch etc. The plants growing underneath the tree are prob the most drought tolerant in the border - Anisacanthus wrightii and Salvia greggii. I did plant a Dortman rose about 4' down from the tree trunk in hopes of it winding its way thru the pine limbs one day. In most places it is a monster, but I have been waiting years for it take off in that difficult spot. Elsewhere, I have had some luck with clems growing up crepe myrtles and altheas because they leaf out so late that the clems get the spring sun. Maybe with this new water system I will better luck with them, knock wood... hope springs eternal in a garden :-)