I have 2 varieties in the garden, although H. calycinum, aka 'Rose of Sharon' was only introduced in the summer of 1999 as a cutting in a 75mm pot, and is still awaiting a permanent home.

The other variety, H. olympicum, has been with me for almost as long as I can remember. It was certainly amongst the first batch of plants brought into the garden when we moved here. It's an evergreen dwarf shrub, reaching around 150mm in height and will spread as far as you let it. It's yellow flowers have long, extruded stamens, and it's very keen on seeding itself. It's one of those plants that you find yourself giving away to every visitor, and is a must for a cottage-garden look.

Each 30mm diameter flowers lasts a day or so, and as evening falls, it withdraws itself into a a 'twist', like on a sweet wrapper. Deadheading these 'twists' prolongs flowering, and the whole plant is trimmed back down to around 50mm high early each spring to encourage new, non-woody growth. The foliage is a grey-green and each flower rises from a leader held above the mass of the plant. I wouldn't like to gues how many individual flowers to expect from a typical plant during the course of a season, but it must be in the thousands!