This is the time of year when my Rose of Sharon tree becomes on the bright stars of my garden.

Our Rose of Sharon begins blooming anywhere from mid-July to the end of July, and continues pretty much through to the end of August. It’s lovely purple blooms brightening up the garden. Lovely.

We moved into our house in June 2001 and it wasn’t until the spring of 2002 that we started landscaping our backyard to create our lovely raised bed garden.

Our neighbor, beside us, has a lovely old Rose of Sharon tree and for some reason hers was always sprouting little baby trees nearby. Now I can’t remember what year it was that she gave us one of her tree’s babies – but I think it was probably in 2003. That would make ours about 6 years old now.

We planted our gifted Rose of Sharon tree in the middle of one of our raised garden beds – basically it’s on the left side of the yard in the middle of the garden. A perfect place to see if from the kitchen window as I cook, clean or putter around or from our patio when we sit outside in the garden.

Here’s a view of the tree from the back of the garden looking towards the house –

Unlike my neighbors old tree ours doesn’t tend to have young trees sprouting up around it in the spring … but maybe that’s just because we mulch our garden so heavily.

I just went out to measure our tree and it’s over 9 feet tall. I think I’ll prune it and shape it in the fall so that next year it won’t get any taller than it is now!

So far we haven’t had any problems with our tree. It’s late to leaf out in the spring – one of the last to develop leaf buds (often in June!), but otherwise it’s healthy and hardy.

I love the trees prolific beautiful hibiscus like flowers … aren’t they pretty?

Do you have a Rose of Sharon tree on your property or perhaps a Hibiscus if you live in a warm area? Don’t you love it?