I need to get one of these, yours is beautiful!!

I have 'Plum Crazy'. It flops on the ground every year whether I give it any fertilizer or not, but that's about the only way I can get flowers as the Japanese beetles eat everything on it except the ones on the ground.

lkayetwv, I do sympathize with you re those JBs. I am out each morning doing my 'squash" routine. As for flopping I stake mine lots otherwise it would be completely on the ground.

Hardy hibiscuses are an important element in the late summer garden here. They are scattered throughout the beds and are part of the greater garden picture rather than a specimen planting. The earliest starts blooming in mid July and will be finishing soon while the latest has not started blooming yet. They do not get any pampering re extra water etc. so this summer has been a bit hard on them. We do get some JB but not enough damage to make it worth trying to pick them off! I took a few pictures this morning. The main viewing points are from the front porch, the driveway and from the road.

From the front porch (I particularly like the big pink one peeking around the arbour - there are more getting ready to bloom that can't be seen in these pictures.):

A view of the roughly same area from the driveway:

And from the road (the Silver Mound artemesia that used to be in the narrowest point of the 'moat bed', across from the path into the big bed, died out this summer and needs to be replaced....) To the left of the white phlox flowers is a deep magenta colored hibiscus that hasn't started flowering yet. It is the last one to flower. The red hibiscuses are just starting to flower - the first blooms opened a few days ago.:

A Lord Baltimore hibiscus along the path to the south gate - the path needs weeding again and I cut off some of the hibiscus when I weeded the path a couple of weeks ago because the hibiscus was leaning too far into the path - there are more flower buds to open - these plants just started flowering a few days ago.... There are usually clematises growing on the gate lattice and arbour but the left half died over the winter and the right side got an invasive seedling of a small white flowered clematis so we ripped it all out and will need to start over next year!:

There are a few more hibiscuses that I didn't get pictures of but these pictures should give you a feel for how they are used in this garden. The only thing we do for maintenance is cut off the seed capsules after the flowers finish to prevent seeding around and we cut all the stems down to ~4" in the fall - we leave enough stem showing so we know where the plants are next spring since they are so late to emerge!

I didn't have any until last year when I plopped in a couple Summer Spice® Blue Brulee™. Too my surprise they returned up here in zone 4. We'll see if that continues. It's definitely a...well....um....interesting color.

Rouge _21, When you squish the Japanese Beetles that sends out their pheromone which then just attracts more beetles. I understand knocking them off into soapy water kills them. I also just recently read that you can prevent treat by spraying your plant with soapy water. They love my dwarf Weeping Willow tree. I will try the spray next year.

debra

Thanks debra. I see web references on both sides of this issue ie "squashing" attracts. Here is one on the 'negatory' side.

https://ask.extension.org/questions/420131

Those are superb flowers dbarron!

I was driving by a townhouse complex and noticed this hibiscus. You can see it is a bit past its prime but I can imagine how extra nice it was.

I bought 'Berry Awesome' 2 years ago and I'm very happy with it.

From first bloom (July 21) to last bloom (September 26/27/28) for our Blue River II Hibiscus.....over 2 months. They are wonderful herbaceous shrubs.