Lil’ Kim® Violet Hibiscus

Rose of Sharon, or hardy hibiscus, used to be a garden staple, it’s soft purple flowers bringing summer color to every garden across the country. Eclipsed by new arrivals, it is enjoying a come-back – and no wonder. New varieties are more compact, and feature bright new colors, like the Lil’ Kim® Violet Hardy Hibiscus, with its vibrant light-purple blooms, highlighted by a blood-red eye. These new varieties are more compact than the old ones, and are ideal for today’s smaller gardens. They also open up possibilities for pot-growing, and ensure these plants won’t take up too much space. It’s important, when planning your garden, to spread blooming across the seasons, so there is always something of interest happening. Spring and early summer are easy, because that’s when most plants flower, but summer and fall need some attention. It used to be we relied on annual flowers, but who has the time today for all that digging and planting? Switch to late-blooming shrubs like this one, and summer flowers are a certainty. Reliably hardy, it bounces back each spring, stronger than ever, but still compact and adaptable – you can’t ask more of any shrub. Using the Lil’ Kim® Violet Hardy Hibiscus in Your Garden The virtues of the Lil’ Kim® Violet Hardy Hibiscus lie in its compact size, and the bold and numerous flowers on a shrub barely 4 feet tall. Use it to fill out your shrub beds and ensure they always have blooms in them. Tuck it between the clipped evergreens around your house for summer color. Use it for a low hedge separating one area from another, to hide an ugly foundation, or to edge a large bed. Use it among perennials in your flower beds, or add suitably-colored annuals around it for a big splash. It also grows well in pots. Use regular potting soil and make sure the pot has drainage. From zone 7 you can leave the pots outside all winter, otherwise bury them in the ground for the coldest months, or store them in a cool shed – no light is needed as they are dormant. Use liquid or slow-release fertilizer for flowering shrubs in spring to get them off to a good start. Growing the Lil’ Kim® Violet Hardy Hibiscus Size and Appearance The Lil’ Kim® Violet Hardy Hibiscus is a small, deciduous shrub that grows 3 to 4 feet tall and wide, pretty much in a single season. In hot zones, and un-pruned, it could become bigger after a few years. It produces an abundance of stems from low-down, covered in glossy, deep-green leaves. These are about 3 inches long, broadly oval, and typically with 2 side-lobes and an irregular edge. Blooming starts around mid-summer and continues right into the fall, often up to the first hard frost. Flowers are up to 3 inches across, like flattened funnels, with a continuous circle of overlapping petals. These are a rich light-purple or purple-pink, and don’t fade in the sunlight. In the center, at the base of each petal, is a blotch of deep red, feathering up into the purple, forming a bright ‘eye’ in the center of the flower. A showy, white column of stamens thrusts up from the center, completing the picture. Each flower lasts about 3 days, and is replaced by more each day, and old flowers quickly shrivel and drop, so dead-heading isn’t needed. No sign of those droopy, withered flowers that used to hang on in older varieties. This variety seems to be sterile, so it doesn’t make seed-pods, which would reduce flowering. The flowers look upwards, so they are maximally beautiful and showy. Hardiness The Lil’ Kim® Violet Hardy Hibiscus is indeed hardy, growing happily in zone 5 and all the way into zone 9 – only the coldest zones are unsuitable. You might see some dead stems in spring in zone 5, but no worries, it benefits from a spring pruning, and flowers on new wood, so you will have abundant blooms wherever you are. Sun Exposure and Soil Conditions For maximum blooming over the longest period, plant in full sun. If it must have a few hours of shade each day, so be it, this tough plant won’t be affected much, just avoid deeper shade. It grows well in any well-drained soil, but isn’t suitable for wet places. (For a similar look that will thrive in wet ground, check out varieties of Hibiscus moscheutos, like Blackberry Merlot.) It will grow happily in dry, poor soil, and is very tough and reliable in almost all garden conditions, even clay soils. Richer garden soils will of course give the very best results, and at least for the first season you might need to give regular water – after that it is rarely necessary.   Maintenance and Pruning Deer don’t bother with your Lil’ Kim® Violet Hardy Hibiscus, and it takes city conditions, urban pollution and urban soils as well. It usually has no pest or disease problems, so it always stays bright and fresh. If you just have one plant, removing dead flowers before they get round to dropping will max-out the display. The only attention needed is a spring pruning. Wait until you see some new growth, and cut back so as to leave just a couple of inches of the growth from the previous year. Remove any dead branches completely, and on an old plant take out one or two of the oldest stems as close to ground-level as you can. Although not necessary, pinching out the tip of the new stems will maximize branching, and thus flowering. That trick is especially useful for plants growing in pots. History and Origin of the Lil’ Kim® Violet Hardy Hibiscus Hardy hibiscus or Rose of Sharon, Hibiscus syriacus, is one of the oldest non-European plants grown in our gardens. It arrived in Europe from Syria, hence the name, but in fact it had come there centuries earlier, along the ancient Silk Road from its home in China and Korea. It was grown and loved by Thomas Jefferson and a feature of Southern gardens. After a brief eclipse in the second half of last century it is back with a bank in new, more colorful and compact varieties, like the Lil’ Kim® Violet Hardy Hibiscus. It is also popular in its home country of Korea, where Kyung-Ku Shim, a professor of horticulture and a plant breeder, is a prominent developer of this plant. Back in 1995 he spotted a unique branch that had the leaves more densely arranged, growing on another variety of hardy hibiscus. This became the variety called ‘Antong Two’, sold in America as Lil’ Kim®. In 2002 he crossed ‘Antong Two’ with pollen from another variety called ‘Busae’. Among the seedlings was one with vibrant flowers, and the compact habit he wanted. Working with Spring Meadow Nursery in New Haven, Michigan, he was granted a US patent on this plant, using the official name of ‘SHIMRV24’. Spring Meadow have released it for gardeners as the Violet variety in the same series, so as Lil’ Kim® Violet. At first it was available only through Proven Winners®, but now it is more widely offered. Buying the Lil’ Kim® Violet Hardy Hibiscus at The Tree Center For abundant blooms and color from mid-summer to the first frost, look no further than the Lil’ Kim® Violet Hardy Hibiscus. Our plants are just bursting with vigor and blooms, and waiting to find a place in your garden. Don’t let them down, and adopt one today, while we still have them in stock. That’s summer in your garden taken care of, a Lil’ solution to a big problem.