I went to a lot of trouble to find some very dark red hollyhocks. For
several years, they flourished and grew to over nine and a half feet,
including last year. I was very proud of them and showed them off. This
year, absolutely no hollyhocks at all. What can have happened? I did
nothing to the flowerbed at all this year or last. Thanks for any tips.

In message , Plum
writes
I went to a lot of trouble to find some very dark red hollyhocks. For
several years, they flourished and grew to over nine and a half feet,
including last year. I was very proud of them and showed them off. This
year, absolutely no hollyhocks at all. What can have happened? I did
nothing to the flowerbed at all this year or last. Thanks for any tips.


Hollyhocks are short lived perennials, commonly treated as biennials.
(One reason for treating them as biennials is that they tend to get
infected with hollyhock rust, and not perform as well in subsequent
years, but that presumably wasn't your problem.)

I've also lost most of my hollyhocks. I think that the problem was
waterlogging during the prolonged wet spell of last May, June and July;
it may not have killed the plants directly, but it weakened them
sufficiently to stop them overwintering successfully. (I also lost a
flowering current, the majority of my herbaceous Lavateras, and a
variety of Sidalceas and shubby Lavateras,

--
Stewart Robert Hinsley
http://www.malvaceae.info http://lavateraguy.blogspot.com