Desert Mallow

This is a wild flower that showed up in Bed #1, and I have kept her and cultivated her for 3 years now. In the sand and sage under native conditions, the Desert Mallow blooms prodigiously during the spring. It will come back year after year, whithering down to the ground during the Summer heat and springing back to life each Spring. "My" Desert Mallow will bloom most of the summer if kept watered. When she gets straggly looking, I cut her back until she is about 6 - 8 inches tall. A few weeks later she is sending up stalks of blooms again. The flowers are not particularly pleasant smelling - but they are strong and attract pollinators from all over: apparently they are not "stinky" to bees and flies. Definitely a boon to the garden as nothing besides basil blooms seem to attract such a wide variety of pollinators to my little plot.