
Remember the Lavatera? Back in early June when the gardening bug first started to really take hold I thought I’d try flowers. Well. BEHOLD. In all its lone glory, the first raggedy caterpillar-eaten lavatera has produced one beeee-eautiful pink flower.
Ladies and gentlemen, I HAVE GROWN A FLOWER.
Now I am fully aware that lavatera should be a bush, and a tall one, effortlessly dripping with pink blooms. And I know they shouldn’t be hard to grow. But nor should sweet peas, and I have a very expensive trellis planter full of sweet pea plants and not a single bloom to show for it. (For the third year running may I add. Although I do have stems this year which is an improvement.) Flowers are not my forte.
But this little guy has made it through being sown late, being ravaged by the great caterpillar attack of 2014, and being planted out late while he waited for raised beds to be constructed and he has still produced a flower. It seems lavatera can grow through anything.
So I think I’ll try these again next Spring when I have fewer things going on and can plant them out on time. Who knows, next year I might get two flowers.