From Danika Hoffman:

Last year, I became obsessed with black flowers.  Black pansies, black dahlias, black lilies, black hollyhocks etc.  I joked that I was creating a ‘goth garden’ even though I am not really the theme garden type. I planned to use green plants and flowers like Green Envy Coneflowers and Bells of Ireland for contrast without detracting from my morbid flowers.

I quickly learned that black is subjective when it comes to garden catalogs and seed packets. All of my “black” flowers turned out to be purple, blue, or even pink. And the black hollyhocks that I started from seed? Small, disappointing bunches of green leaves, nothing more. I hadn’t really researched them, so I chalked it up to a learning experience and vowed to have a more cheerful garden next year.

Fast forward to early spring with 2 inches of snow on the ground — I noticed green leaves pushing up through the snow! The hollyhocks from last year came alive, waking up even before the tulips.  And they were HUGE!  I was dismayed at the prospect of their boring foliage taking over my garden again.

I’m so glad I resisted my urge to tear them out. They quickly grew to be over 6 feet tall and their beautiful flowers (called “Arabian Night” on the seed packet) were the closest thing to black of all my Goth Garden attempts.  They are stunning and a new favorite. I plan to let them re-seed and see what happens — they are bi-annuals and research has been mixed as to whether these will come back again.

Hollyhocks were once known as “outhouse flowers.” Back in the day, people would plant them around the outhouse so that people didn’t have to ask where the outhouse was, they could just look for the hollyhocks. They probably provided a bit of privacy when you opened the door, too. Luckily times have changed, since I planted them very close to the dining room window!

What has been your biggest garden surprise?  Have you had any experiments go wrong, but then turned out to be so right?

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Flowers + Grasses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.