Frost Hardy Hibiscus

Twenty years ago we moved Lambley Nursery from the Dandenong Ranges to our present site in Ascot, Central Victoria. Soon after we arrived a local farmer, Jim Kinnersley, gave me a pot of a frost hardy, herbaceous Hibiscus. The nursery, for want of a name, called it Hibiscus ‘Ascot Pink’. A year or two later Jim gave me a deep reddish pink variety which we called Hibiscus ‘Ascot Red’. Both plants did very well growing two metres tall each year and producing dozens of flowers, each twenty centimetres across. Jim had originally got cuttings of these plants from the Deniliquin Bowling Club. At the time I wondered if Dennis Norgate knew anything about the two Hibiscus. He did. Norgate’s Plant Farm at Trentham had produced them commercially in the 1950s.

To cut a long story short we then imported half a dozen new varieties from the USA. Most of them were bred by the three Fleming brothers, bachelors all, of Lincoln, Nebraska. These three men, the last of whom died ten years ago, spent a lifetime breeding new plants. Their special love was the herbaceous Hibiscus species which grow wild in the USA. The brothers set out to produce compact plants with large tropical looking flowers, a long blooming period and good foliage. They also had to be frost hardy down to -30C.
 

The following are six Fleming brothers’ varieties which we have grown at Lambley for the past ten years or so.

	Hibiscus ‘Crown Jewels’ is very dwarf growing at 80cm tall by 70cm across. The large creamy white flowers have a faint pink blush and a showy magenta eye. The flowers show up well against the bronze red maple like leaves.
	Hibiscus ‘Fantasia’ grows 120cm tall by 100cm across and during January, February and March produces a succession of large round, sumptuous crimson-magenta flowers some 20cm across.
	Hibiscus ‘Fireball’ is the last to flower, not a single bloom until autumn, but in some ways is the most beautiful of all with large true red, round flowers, some 20cm across, set on strong leafy stems. The leaves are much dissected and reddish black. It grows 150cm tall by 120cm wide.
	Hibiscus ‘Kopper King’ makes metre tall stems clothed with handsome large bronze red fingered leaves. During summer and early autumn large blush pink flowers with deeper pink veining and a prominent red eye are produced. It grows about a metre across. My wife, Criss Canning’s painted this variety, and it was shown in her exhibition at Metro Gallery May 2011.
	Hibiscus ‘Moon Dance’ (Old Yella) is a free and long flowering variety with each stem producing up to twenty flowers if the plant is well looked after. Each flower is 20cm across and has moonlight wan flowers with a contrasting magenta eye. It grows about 120cm tall by as much across.
	Hibiscus ‘Plum Crazy’ grows 120cm tall and as much wide and its stems are well clothed with three lobed purple-green leaves and crowned with 18cm diameter plum-purple flowers with deeper coloured veins and a black-purple throat.

Other herbaceous varieties which we imported at the same time were:

	Hibiscus ‘Moy Grande’ has the largest flower of all, the shot silk, deep rose pink flowers are 30cm in diameter. A spectacular plant which grows 120cm tall and as much across in our garden.
	Hibiscus ‘Raspberry Rose’ can grow very large, with us some 180cm tall by as much across and is a very generous bloomer producing hundreds of 15cm diameter raspberry red flowers.

All the herbaceous hibiscus will grow readily in the gardens in inland Australia as well as coastal areas as far north as Sydney and perhaps even further north.

I grow them here at Lambley in the vegetable garden against a west facing fence. They prefer a sunny spot and good rich soil. I water them once a week during the hot weather. The herbaceous Hibiscus over winter as perennial crowns and we cut them to the ground during late autumn. They are given a good feed of Organic Life fertiliser (or anything else that comes to hand) mulched and kept clean of weeds until the following mid-spring when they come into growth again.