Margaret's mallow 2.0

Margaret wrote to me last month, "After our rains, I thought to check your blog for rain totals and take a trip down Mallow Memory Lane. Here is a photo of my mallow (there are actually four clustered together) taken on 3/3/14. I never watered it at all! Not bad for our dry winter. The mallow has been doing really well.  I try to keep it trimmed so that it doesn't grow past 10 feet.  I'm excited for the [upcoming predicted] rain.  Every year around this time, one lone sunflower plant will spring up in my backyard.  This year I have +/-10 scattered through the yard.  I guess the squirrels have been busy."


I agree.  My native garden is doing OK with supplemental water (I have some less than one year and one year old installed plants).

The source of Margaret's mallow (Lavatera assurgentiflora) was some seed from a neighbor of mine when I lived in Hawthorne.  Their mother or grandmother had brought the original seed back from a trip to the Channel Islands. The plants are short lived, but have beautiful flowers and of course they enjoy the climate here, just a short distance from the island where they are from.