The sweetest mallows
These tough beauties add oodles of summer colour – and the most popular of all was found at the roadside
BACK in the mid1980s, clients of garden designer Rosemary Verey kicked up a fuss about the colour of a tree mallow that she had planted in their garden. The couple regarded its glowing magenta blooms as far too loud for a border, where it hogged the limelight, overshadowing its neighbours.
The legendary gardener – who listed the Prince of Wales and Sir Elton John among her clientele – was determined to find a more subdued replacement. What happened next was serendipity. She spotted a pale variety at the side of a road and took a few cuttings for rooting at Barnsley House, her Cotswolds home.
Today, Lavatera x clementii ‘Barnsley’ is the most popular tree mallow in the world, treasured for its 3in-wide, red-eyed white flowers that turn a silvery pink as they mature. These are produced in huge number, from June until September, on a thicket of 6ft-tall, upright stems clothed with lobed leaves.
It may be the best known, but ‘Barnsley’ is not the only tree mallow that will light up gardens with a succession of summer blooms. There are scores of varieties that are perfect for planting now in sunny beds, borders or pots, ensuring a jawdropping display in a few months’ time.
Their common name might give the impression they form a single trunk, but tree mallows are actually shrubs with a bushy habit of growth. There are deciduous, semi-evergreen and evergreen ones, ranging in height from a diminutive 3ft up to 10ft – most are around the 6ft mark.
Closely related to hollyhocks and hibiscus, tree mallows come from Asia, Africa, North America and Europe, with one species native to Britain. Breeding work on these wild plants has led to lots of garden-worthy varieties with flowers in shades of white, pink and blue. Some have a distinctive eye or attractive veining on petals.
Flowers are a magnet to bees and butterflies, and are displayed against a backdrop of large, palmate leaves that beg to be touched thanks to their soft, velvety texture. The majority are a greyish-green colour but there are a couple of varieties with variegated foliage. Tree mallows prefer light, free-draining soil and are reasonably drought-tolerant once established. They are great in coastal locations and are a cottage garden stalwart, where their height and spread make them ideal for the middle or back of a mixed border. Another option is to give them breathing space, using them as specimens in a lawn.
Modern breeding has led to a number of compact forms that peak at 3ft, allowing them to be raised in pots on the patio.
These shrubs are best in containers filled with soil-based compost, such as John Innes No3, and will flourish with regular watering and feeding with a balanced fertiliser.
Keeping them looking good is easy. As plants form buds on new shoots, cut all stems to within a foot of the ground in late winter or early spring to encourage a flush of fresh growth. Some varieties will occasionally produce shoots with different-coloured blooms – cut these stems to the ground to prevent them taking over.
Sadly, they are not long-lived shrubs and will last for four to five years before they run out of steam. Their lifespan will be slashed if they are hit by rust, a fungal disease that disfigures leaves. You should pick off the worst affected, then spray with a suitable fungicide, such as Bayer Fungus Fighter Plus.
THEY ARE SHRUBS, NOT TREES, WHATEVER THEIR NAME SUGGESTS