Specialty Gardening: Cottage Garden in Southern California?, 1 by jkom51

jkom51 wrote:
One last thought -- remember that in our evergreen, mild winter CA climate, you need good foliage to carry the cottage garden. Other regions are justifiably jealous of the incredible foliage plants that we can use to brighten up shaded beds.

For example, in the photo of my front yard garden above, there is a large, bright yellow mini-shrub located just about in the center of the photo. This is a beautiful lavatera (mallow) variety called "Aureum". It's relatively rare, even here, but it should never have been in this front yard bed. It burns during the summer, and would be much better located in a partially sunny or bright shade bed. This taught me you just can't believe the plant tags -- 'full sun' must refer to foggy San Francisco instead of the Oakland hills -- the leaves get a bit crispy with late-summer Western-facing exposure!

The leaves come out bright yellow and fade to chartreuse. Similar to pelargoniums, they have thick soft stems and are easy to prune to shape. The real show is in mid-summer when it shoots out spectacular long spikes of individual, large showy flowers. But all year round, this mini-shrub is gorgeous as it sits next to a purple-leafed Chinese Fringe Flower shrub (Loropetalum chinense var. rubrum).