![]() In fact, the hollyhock is so entwined in Japanese history that the City of Kyoto holds an annual hollyhock festival and a Japanese soccer club uses the hollyhock as its mascot. Some ancient Japanese shoguns used the hollyhock as a symbol of their clans. However, hollyhocks were grown in the Far East long before the crusaders made their way to the Middle East. The popularity of this horse hock salve was so popular that many believe it gave rise to one of the first recorded names of this plant: “holy hock.”īecause the Holy Land was the source of the hollyhocks that were grown in Europe, many assumed that they originated there. ![]() One of these uses was to sooth their horses’ sore hooves. While in the Holy Land, the crusaders found that this plant had a wide range of medicinal uses. The English got their first hollyhock seeds from knights who were returning from the crusades. While they have been grown there for a very long time, their original roots grew in places that were very far away from the British Isles. Thanks to the success of the cottage-garden style, many people think of hollyhocks as English plants. People all across the world have grown and loved hollyhocks for a very long time. Once you get hollyhocks started, you really will have them forever. Not only are they large, lovely spring-blooming plants that are covered in large, colorful blooms, they also reseed with abandon. Since they are so tough and so reliable, hollyhocks have been a huge part of the cottage form since its beginning. Self-seeding annuals, vines, bulbs and long-lived perennials were used to create spaces that tumbled together to give a lush, full appearance. Typically gardens of the English working class, the cottage style emphasized tough plants that required little care. ![]() While the roots of the cottage garden go back much further, the technical form arose as a protest to the elegantly designed and maintained gardens of the English gentry. The garden style we now call “cottage” came to maturity in England during the 1870s. However, in my mind, my cottage garden is not complete unless it is “dotted” with hollyhocks every spring. ![]() My cottage garden is full of roses of all shapes and colors, passalong irises and daylilies, asters, petunias and honeysuckle. To me, cottage simply means beds that are full of “old timey” plants of different sizes and textures that tumble together to provide a natural look. This has been a pretty simple task since the term “cottage garden” is one of those phrases that can mean a hundred different things to a hundred different gardeners. Over the past few years I have tried to create what I call a cottage garden in the beds that surround my house. Each year I grow things like castor beans (this year’s castor bean grew more than 12’ tall), sunflowers (mammoth and Maximilion), cleome and hollyhocks. I don’t know where it comes from, but if you look around my house it is undeniable. ![]()
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