True chiffon texture
Petaloid stamens fill the centre without hiding the flower’s elegant funnel.
Hibiscus 'Blue Chiffon'® 19cm — Care & Tips
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Family: Malvaceae · Pot: 19 cm · Height: 55 cm
Hibiscus syriacus ‘Notwood3’ Blue Chiffon® brings the cool charm of lavender blue to the summer garden. Its large flowers unfold like fine fabric, with rippled outer petals, deeper red touches near the heart and a small swirl of airy petaloids at the centre. Their contrast with the green foliage gives each bloom a clear presence. Romantic yet fresh, it creates a corner of the garden that is a pleasure to look towards again and again.
Its upright crown opens gently outwards, adding rhythm to a flowering border or informal hedge. Alongside fine grasses and white perennials, the blue-violet tones gain depth without making the planting feel heavy. In a substantial pot it can provide the vertical focus of a terrace, with flowers renewing the display from summer towards autumn.
RHS Award of Garden Merit — a current official distinction for ‘Notwood3’ BLUE CHIFFON®.
Three distinct details explain the horticultural value of Blue Chiffon®.
Petaloid stamens fill the centre without hiding the flower’s elegant funnel.
New growth continues setting buds after many spring shrubs have finished.
Its vase-shaped crown supplies vertical structure while leaving room for lower planting at the base.
Why you will love it: A rare blue-violet impression meets an airy petaloid centre, making the flower intricate without heaviness.
Place in the middle or rear of a sunny border against a warm neutral background that clarifies the blue-violet flowers, allowing the upright crown to mature as a complete architectural element.
Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’, Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ and Gaura lindheimeri ‘Whirling Butterflies’ share sunny drainage; low blue haze, a vertical line and white movement support the cool blue flowers.
Full sun for dense growth and plentiful buds; morning sun is useful in extreme heat.
Provide moderate but deep water once established. Avoid both chronic drought and heavy saturated soil.
Hardy to roughly −20 °C or below depending on site and clone; late spring emergence is entirely normal.
An ornamental cultivar, not intended for consumption.
Full sun for dense growth and plentiful buds; morning sun is useful in extreme heat.
Provide moderate but deep water once established. Avoid both chronic drought and heavy saturated soil.
Fertile, well-drained soil from slightly acid to alkaline. A warm sheltered site ripens the wood more effectively.
Apply compost and a balanced feed as new growth starts; avoid excess nitrogen that produces length rather than flowers.
It flowers on new growth. In late winter thin weak stems and shorten the framework to improve branching.
It loses its leaves and remains woody. Do not assume the bare plant is dead before its characteristically late spring growth.
The first season builds roots and a woody base even when spring emergence appears slow. Current-season shoots will carry the late flowers, so there is no reason to remove them prematurely.
Annual shoots extend into a vertical crown and form buds that open successively into blue-violet semi-double corollas.
At full maturity the crown reaches about 2.4–3.7 m in height and 1.8–3 m in spread. Final planting distance must follow that scale rather than the plant’s current young volume.
An upright deciduous shrub with outward-opening branches, lobed foliage and semi-double blue-violet flowers.
Flowers appear on new growth in summer. The leaves fall in winter, revealing the branching woody framework.
At Lynn in England, Dr Roderick Woods was seeking hibiscus with distinctive flowers and uniform, hardy growth. In summer 2001 he crossed seed-parent selection 219 with pollen-parent selection 202-717. In August 2003 he selected one flowering offspring with large blue blooms and numerous smaller petaloids at their centre.
Named ‘Notwood3’, it was propagated from softwood cuttings from spring 2004. These retained its characteristic flower form and upright, branching crown. As Blue Chiffon®, the selection joined the Chiffon Series and the Proven Winners collection.
A bronze medal at Plantarium followed in 2007, and US plant patent PP20574 was granted in 2009. The RHS Award of Garden Merit adds another chapter to its journey from a carefully selected flower detail to a shrub with recognised garden value.
In ‘Notwood3’, some stamens have a petal-like form and make up the narrow, ruffled inner parts of the flower. They surround the central staminal column and add an airy second layer within the five broad outer petals. This arrangement creates the characteristic semi-double appearance of Blue Chiffon®.
The blue-violet colour of hibiscus flowers involves anthocyanins and the chemical environment inside petal cells. Delphinidin derivatives have also been detected in Hibiscus syriacus; the final shade cannot be explained simply by the presence or absence of a single pigment.
Six exact answers about placement, watering, pruning and seasonal behaviour for Blue Chiffon®.
It can grow in a very large pot, but a mature scale of 2.4–3.7 m × 1.8–3 m makes open ground the better long-term choice. In a pot, monitor moisture and root space more frequently.
Full sun for dense growth and plentiful buds; morning sun is useful in extreme heat. Keep an open visual field around its mature 1.8–3 m spread so the cultivar’s particular crown remains clearly legible.
Provide moderate but deep water once established. Avoid both chronic drought and heavy saturated soil.
Blue Chiffon® flowers on current-season shoots. Wait for buds to swell in late winter or early spring, then remove dead, weak or crossing wood.
The impression is blue-violet rather than spectrally cyan. Pigments, cellular pH and light scattering over a pale ground combine to create the unusual result.
Blue Chiffon® is deciduous and remains outdoors. A bare crown is normal and spring emergence is late; assess stem life when buds begin to swell.