. I saw such beautiful
hollyhocks around Lake Minnetonka and I have never been able to make
them winter. I would like to ask about that.

Mr. Hawkins: We have three plants, hollyhocks, digitalis and canterbury
bells, and nearly all have the same trouble with them. If we mulch them
we are liable to have the center decay and the plants practically
useless. It is a question of mulching them too much or not mulching
them. I would like to have you speak up and tell us your experience. I
have in mind a gentleman who raises splendid hollyhocks in the
neighborhood of the lakes. Takes no care of them, and yet he had one
this year seventeen feet high, which took care of itself and had any
amount of blossoms. I tried that experiment several years myself of
mulching them, and the crown rotted. These are three of the best flowers
of the garden, and we ought to have some certain way of keeping them.

A Member: Have you ever tried mulching them with corn stalks?

Mr. Hawkins: Yes, I have tried it but lost them.

A Member: I had very good luck with them that way.

A Member: It is more a question of drainage than of mulching.

Mr. Hawkins: That might be.

Mrs. Gould: I wish simply to say that the trouble with winter grown
hollyhocks and canterbury bells is that they will head so tall and must
be kept dry. I always cover the hollyhocks and if I had the others I
think I would cover them. I uncover mine early in the spring, and if it
gets cold put on a little more straw. You are almost sure to uncover
them the wrong time. With foxgloves I think it is almost unnecessary to
cover them.

Mr. Hawkins: In our gardens the hollyhocks form one of the best
backgrounds we can have, beautiful, tall, stately stalks, and the
canterbury bells, certainly nothing more beautiful than they. Then we
come to the other, the digitalis, which is equally as beautiful. We must
give our attention to the protection and growth of these in years to
come because they are three of the beautiful things of the garden. It
has been suggested that digitalis be potted and put inside the cold
frame and leaves put over them. I think leaves are a splendid protection
if you can keep them dry. If I were using them as a mulch I would keep
out the water by covering with roofing paper to keep them dry.

Mrs. Countryman: I am told on good authority that the hollyhock is a
true perennial and not a biennial.

Mrs. White: It is listed in the foreign catalogs as both a perennia