Take one all-time cottage garden favourite, change its flowers from pink to butter yellow, make it perennial rather than biennial, and throw in complete resistance to hollyhock/mallow rust (Puccinia malvacearum)– and there you have it! What’s not to love! This is one of my favourite new discoveries and I’m so happy to be able to share it!
Native to grasslands of Ukraine, Crimea, the Caucasus, and across central Asia to Kazakhstan and Mongolia, this tall herbaceous floriferous perennial is both heat and drought tolerant (once established), and cold hardy, and has an exceptionally long flowering period. Spires of the yellow flowers arise in spring from the evergreen basal rosette of lobed, slightly crinkled leaves. The large trumpet shaped flowers advertise their wares perfectly and are magnets for bees and apparently butterflies, though I haven’t noticed this as much. Height 120 – 180cm ( a little shorted than A. rosea), so best against a wall or at the back of a border. Winter dormant. Disease resistant.
9cm pot