The Plant Lady: There’s plenty to love about lavender, but choose the right kind
Lavender has been grown for thousands of years for its medicinal and aromatic properties. The oils were often used as a disinfectant, for pest control, as an aphrodisiac, culinary purposes and to treat various medical ailments.
Besides being important medicinally, lavender is a wonderful plant to grace your garden and important for various pollinators such as bees. Here’s what they need:
Sunlight
Native to the Mediterranean region, full sun (defined as six or more hours per day) is required for lavender to thrive. It will grow with less, but flowers will be lacking and the plant will be stretched out and less compact. A stressed plant is also more susceptible to diseases.
Soil
Drainage is key. If soil is kept too wet, various fungal pathogens will attack the plant. Often it seems half the plant will die – quickly followed by the entire plant succumbing. To mediate this problem, either plant on a raised soil mound in a pot or amend your soil with red lava dust or compost. If growing in a pot, I recommend using a succulent potting soil. Some species handle soils differently. When working on a lavender farm, I noted that true English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) succumbed quickly to rot while other species (and especially hybrids) thrived.
Irrigation
Lavender should be planted in spring or fall. Once the plant is established (a few weeks normally) water only when the soil is on the dry side. The watering schedule of course depends on your soil type. As an example, a hedge of 50 lavenders planted along my driveway in clay needed a deep soaking with a drip hose every 2 weeks during the summer. Mulching your lavenders will allow you to go longer between watering. A 3-inch layer of compost or wood chips around the plants is ideal. However, do not place the mulch or compost right up against the plant.
Pruning
Pruning is a mandatory and often overlooked task of most gardeners. By incorporating pruning, you are preventing a woody, stretched out plant. After the first flush of blooms, do a light pruning to remove spent flowers. In fall, do a more severe pruning. Aim to remove one-third to two-thirds of the plant. The rule is to not cut below any green material. If this occurs the chances of regrowth is slim to none. Pruning each year will keep your plant more compact.
Species/Cultivars of lavender
There are over 25 species of lavender, with hundreds of cultivars. There are even white and pink blooming plants available, as well as ones with variegated foliage. Below are some that should be tried in everyone’s garden.
▪ Spanish Lavender: L. stoechas is an early blooming lavender. Otto Quast is a highly reliable deep purple bloomer. The peak bloom is early in spring followed by a few blooms throughout the year. A white cultivar and pink cultivar are Alba and Madrid Pink Improved, respectively.
▪ English lavender: This is the species that is used most often to make essential oil. Maillette is the most common cultivar in France used in the perfume industry. Besides oil production, L. angustifolia varieties are often grown for dried flower production since many have intense purple color. Some notable cultivars are Hidcote, Hidcote Giant and Munstead.
▪ French lavender: L. dentata is distinguishable by its fern-like leaves, which have a very strong fragrance.
▪ Lavadin: These are crosses of L. angustifolia and L. latifolia, resulting in the name Lavandula x intermedia. I highly recommend lavadins as they have wonderful fragrance/blooms and handle common garden soils much better than the traditional English lavender. Provence is a large (3 feet by 3 feet) spiked flowering lavender grown for its pale purple flowers. Grosso is a standout in a garden. The deep purple flowers are high in oil content, making it great for production and dried flowers.
▪ Other notable lavenders: Goodwin Creek Gray is a reliable larger lavender (2 feet by 3 feet) with gray foliage. L. pinnata is an interesting lavender in that it has more of a citrus fragrance. It is the least frost-tolerant– often freezing out when temperatures hit the high 20s. It has beautiful feather like foliage and tall, deep purple flowers that bloom all season to all year long if in a protected garden location.
Propagation
The easiest way to propagate lavender is from cuttings. Cuttings should be taken from spring growth before it becomes too woody. A 4-to-6-foot cutting will root readily in a perlite/vermiculite mix with a dab of rooting hormone. The pot of cuttings should be bagged to create a greenhouse environment.
Harvesting
One of the perks of growing lavender is the ability to create your own lavender sachets and dried bouquets. The oil content varies from species and cultivar, but to achieve peak oil content it is best to harvest when around 50 percent of the individual flowers on a stem are open. For drying, about 25 percent of the flowers should be open. To dry the flowers, simply hang a cluster of flower stems in a cool, dry, dark place. If desired, you can then strip the individual flowers off the stem once dry.