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How to Grow Hibiscus

A dinner plate sized Lady Baltimore Pink Hibiscus in the garden.

A Lady Baltimore Pink Hibiscus.

Photo Credit
Bryan Pollard/Shutterstock
Botanical Name
Hibiscus syriacus, H. moscheutos, H. coccineus
Plant Type
Shrubs and Bushes
Sun Exposure
Full Sun
Part Sun
Soil pH
Slightly Acidic to Neutral
Bloom Time
Summer
Fall
Flower Color
Blue
Multicolor
Pink
Purple
Red
White
Hardiness Zone
5
6
7
8
9

Planting, Growing, and Pruning Hibiscus

Catherine Boeckmann
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With huge, colorful dinner-plate size flowers, perennial hibiscus plants add a bold, tropical effect to the garden. They are also highly attractive to butterflies and hummingbirds! Here’s how to plant, grow, and care for hibiscus flowers.

About Hibiscus

There are many types of hibiscus. This growing guide covers perennial hibiscus grown for their strikingly beautiful, big, disc-shaped, hollyhock-like flowers that can measure up to 12 inches across!

Perennial hibiscus can grow up to eight feet tall, but dwarf varieties are only two to three feet tall. 

Hibiscus are members of the mallow family, which has over 300 members of annuals, perennials, trees, and shrubs.

Read Next

Planting

When to Plant Hibiscus

Hibiscus can be purchased as young plants from nurseries and are best planted in the spring. Or, they can be rooted from a cutting in the spring.

If you wish to grow hibiscus from seed, sow indoors 12 weeks before the last spring frost date. Soak seeds in very warm water for one hour before sowing. Alternatively, seeds can be sown outdoors after the last expected frost date.

Choosing and Preparing a Planting Site

  • Choose a site that gets full sun; they’ll grow in partial sun but will not flower as well.
  • Hibiscus prefers well-draining soil with plenty of organic matter and neutral to slightly acidic soil.
  • To avoid breakage of the long stems, plant hibiscus where they won’t be exposed to strong winds.

How to Plant Hibiscus

  • Plant potted hibiscus plants so that their stems are just at the soil surface.
  • To root a cutting in the spring, cut off a branch 5 to 6 inches long and strip off lower leaves. Plant the cutting in a pot with a mix of three parts sand and one part peat. Roots should form within a few weeks. Transplant the cutting from the pot into the ground.
  • The hibiscus species that die back each year can be spaced 2 to 3 feet apart. Consider the potential height and width (up to 12 feet and 10 feet, respectively) of a mature plant before planting.
  • Water the plants well at the time of planting.

Growing

How to Care for Hibiscus Shrubs

  • Hibiscus needs frequent watering, especially when young and new. When watering, do so deeply and thoroughly, drenching the plant.
  • Mulch around the plant to retain moisture and to provide winter protection for the roots.
  • To encourage rebloom, either remove the spent flowers before they form seed heads or prune plants back by one-third after a flush of bloom is finished.
  • Perennial hibiscus will freeze back to the ground each winter; cut old stems to the ground.
  • Hibiscus blooms on new wood (this year’s growth), so pruning is best done in the spring.
  • In early spring, remove dead stems from established plants and apply a balanced fertilizer.
  • Over the growing season, hibiscus can benefit from a fertilizer that is high in potassium, medium to medium-high in nitrogen, and low in phosphorus, as the plant can be sensitive to phosphorus.
  • Mature plants can be divided in the spring, not fall.

Types

Scarlet Swamp Hibiscus (H. coccineus): This plant, also known as Texas Star, has 5-petaled, brilliant-red flowers. It grows to a height of seven feet each growing season, dies back to the ground every winter, and resprouts in spring.

Rose Mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos): This is the classic dinner-plate hibiscus due to the large size of its flowers. These large, fast-growing plants bloom from August to October, and each plant may flaunt several 10 to 12-inch wide flowers at once. A few of the many popular cultivars are:

  • ‘Anne Arundel’ has pink flowers, nine inches in diameter, on plants five feet tall.
  • ‘Kopper King’ has light pink to white flowers with a burgundy center, 12 inches in diameter, with coppery red deeply cut leaves.
  • ‘Lady Baltimore’ is a popular old variety with pink flowers and red centers on five-foot-tall plants.
  • ‘Lord Baltimore’ is another old variety with red flowers on five-foot-tall plants.

 

Gardening Products

Pests/Diseases

Insect pests of hibiscus include aphids, whiteflies, and Japanese beetles. 

Clean up all plant debris to avoid fungal diseases which can cause leaf spots. Don’t crowd plants, and keep mulch from touching the stems to avoid blight. 

Wit and Wisdom

  • The plant has been used to soothe headaches, aching limbs, coughs, and inflammations. 
  • Hibiscus tea is made from parts of a different type of hibiscus, Hibiscus sabdariffa—also known as Roselle or Florida Cranberry. It’s native to West Africa but is now grown across Central America, the Caribbean, and even Florida.
  • In Victorian times, giving a hibiscus blossom to a person meant that the giver acknowledged the receiver’s delicate beauty. Learn more about the language of flowers.
  • The yellow hibiscus is the state flower of Hawaii.
Shrubs and Trees
About The Author

Catherine Boeckmann

Catherine Boeckmann loves nature, stargazing, and gardening so it’s not surprising that she and The Old Farmer’s Almanac found each other. She leads digital content for the Almanac website, and is also a certified master gardener in the state of Indiana. Read More from Catherine Boeckmann
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Comments

lorraine Mcintyre (not verified)

3 years 8 months ago

Question?... I would like more infos on how to care for Hibiscus inside the house for the winter should I remove the small leaves on the bottom stem? When should I cut in down of one third?...Should I spay the leaves with something when bringing it from my patio to inside the house? should I fertilize??

Move your hibiscus plants into winter storage before the first fall frost. Check the plants for insects, especially whitefly, before you bring inside. It needs to stay in a spot with some light and temperatures warmer than 50 degrees F. Don’t worry if the flowers and leaves fall off! This is normal as your plant is going into dormancy. Water the plant, but only when the soil is dry. In the early spring, you can prune back any leggy growth, repot, and start fertilizing every couple weeks. Slowly get the hibiscus used to the outdoors once all danger of frost has passed.

Nancy Carlson (not verified)

3 years 9 months ago

I would like to buy an Hibiscus plant. There are great deals now. Can you plant them outside is October with good results? I am in zone 5.

Hi Nancy,
You can absolutely plant hibiscus in the fall. We recommend purchasing one of the hardy varieties that we mention in the article above!

Kristine (not verified)

3 years 11 months ago

Also my dog loves eating the flowers are they bad for dogs

Anne (not verified)

3 years 2 months ago

only the Rose of Sharon is bad for pets; other hibiscus are fine;

The Editors

3 years 11 months ago

According to the ASPCA, hibiscus flowers are not poisonous to dogs. However, too much of a good thing can also be bad! We’d recommend preventing your pups from eating too many of the flowers in one sitting.

Kristine (not verified)

3 years 11 months ago

Hi I have a white webby mass with little white bugs on my hibiscus plant. I've sprayed with hose tried been oil and pruned but they kept coming back every year. What is this a what do I do to get rid of them. They kill my leaves.

It sounds like you could be dealing with either spider mites, whiteflies, or mealybugs, which are all common insect pests. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot you can do to prevent them from coming back each year on outdoor plants, since even if you totally get rid of them on your plants, they may just travel over from your neighbor’s yard and start up another infestation. For this reason, your best bet is to focus on keeping damage to a minimum instead of on outright prevention.

The things you are already doing are good tactics. Keep a close eye on the plants around the time when you first start seeing the bugs and then prune off effected areas, and use neem oil as well. Alternatively, try using a different insecticidal soap if neem oil hasn’t done the trick. This can be found at a local garden center or online.

Sharon Guy (not verified)

3 years 11 months ago

Just wanted to tell you I have a beautiful hibiscus plant that has already given me 1032 blooms. It still has more buds ready to burst. What an awesome plant this is.