Lavatera Arborea

A biennial that behaves like a small tree. In its second year it puts up a thick woody stem to two metres, clothed in big velvety ivy-shaped leaves and covered from June to September with saucer-shaped purplish-pink flowers like small hibiscus.

It comes from the cliff tops of western Europe and it is built for punishment. Salt-laden wind, thin stony soil, drought on an exposed rock face: it takes all of it, and it actually excretes surplus salt through its leaves, which very few plants can do. In a coastal garden it is one of the very few large flowering plants that thrives rather than merely survives.

Grow it hard. On rich fed ground it makes a tall soft plant that blows over; on poor stony soil it makes a compact one that stands. It develops a deep taproot fast, so sow one seed per deep pot and plant out without disturbing it. And it is a biennial, so the first year is stem and leaf and nothing else, though in a mild coastal garden plants often carry on three or four years. It is now botanically Malva arborea, the genus Lavatera having largely been folded into Malva.