When and how do I prune my lavatera tree? We used to think this plant was a bush!
Lavatera does tend to grow vigorously, and can get quite woody. You can cut a third off the top of each stem in late autumn, and then in mid-spring finish your pruning by cutting all the previous year’s growth to about 6 inches from the ground. Hard pruning will encourage flowering, and keep the plant more compact. New shoots may be slow to appear (may not happen until early summer).
In my experience, a small start of Lavatera turned into an 8 foot tree in one year, and because it was in a spot where a tree was not desirable, I took a cutting, then dug up the plant, and started afresh–but this may be an extreme solution to the problem!
What unites gardeners from all walks of life? A passionate loathing of slugs and snails. Perhaps if we understood these little slimy mollusks better – their lifecycle, their tastes – we\’d learn to appreciate them for the successful creatures they are. Or at least we could learn how to drive them out of our gardens with the latest science has to offer.
The BBC’s Science and Nature web site once had an in-depth article on snails and slugs that made fascinating reading. https://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/features/291feature1.shtml
This interview with malacologist Mary Seddon may be interesting: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ntj9z
- Slugs have memory and will return another night to finish off tasty seedlings until they are all gone.
- A few plants slugs find distasteful: foxgloves, many species in the daisy family, Lavateras, hollyhocks, azaleas, Euphorbia, hardy Geraniums.
A long list of “Slug Resistant Plants” is given in a Seattle Times article by local writer Valerie Easton.