Malva Alba

The white musk mallow, and the most refined of the family. Silky pure-white saucers over foliage that is finely divided and almost ferny, a long way from the coarse rounded leaves of the bigger mallows, and gently musk-scented when you brush past it.

At 60 to 90cm it is compact and bushy rather than the towering shrub that Malva sylvestris makes, which makes it far easier to place. It flowers June through September, takes heavy clay or dry sand as long as there is some drainage, and is hardy well below anything a Norfolk winter offers. Flowers and young leaves are edible, with a mild lettuce flavour.

The one intervention that matters is the midsummer chop. By July the plant goes leggy and the flowering slows; shear the stems back by half, water it in, and you get a fresh flush of foliage and flowers for autumn. Skip it and you have a straggly plant from August onwards. It self-seeds steadily into a slowly expanding colony, and seedlings near a coloured mallow will not come back white.