How to grow Lavender

Lavender hates wet conditions especially over winter. You can add horticultural grit, (sold at garden centres.) If your ground is heavy or a clay soil, it can become waterlogged in winter. These conditions will necessitate a gravel trench to create a greater area of free draining soil. You many have more success growing Lavender in containers. 

Gardeners in the South and East, with drier gardens and free draining soil, will read this wondering what an earth I am on about, recommending all these trenches and grit.

In one of my gardens the soil was very wet.  Even with preparation, at the end of the Winter my lavender looked very sorry for itself as per the image. This lavender picked up over the summer, but some plants suffered so badly they become compost. I persist in growing Lavender  because I love the scent of Lavender, but now they are all growing either in containers and a wall.

If your soil is wet, an alternative is to grow Nepeta in the borders and plant Lavender in containers. 

Another possibility is to grow a Lavender said to be more tolerant of wetter conditions. Lavender 'Havana' has been developed for wetter growing conditions, and I have planted in a wet garden close to the water table.

When I had a garden in the Pennines, I planted it in a raised walled area.  It did emerge from the winter wet in better shape, so worth a try, and a nice-looking lavender.

Lavender 'havana' and a good selection of Lavenders are available from Suttons.

 

Lavender is ideal for growing in containers as it likes free draining soil and is drought tolerant. It is easy to be tempted to put the lavender in a large pot, thinking it will grow into all the space. Many plants do not do well if planted into a large pot, instead they should be potted up into a slightly larger, and then slightly larger pot, and then into its eventual large pot.

To do otherwise is called overpotting. You may get away with it. Or it maybe the compost was a bit wet, the weather not ideal, it rained a lot, anything which will cause the plant problems getting established. As a result, there is reduced aeration around the roots, which inhibits the take up of food and the plant doesn't thrive. 

Pot up in two/three stages and keep lavender on the dry side in a sunny spot. They make a great patio plant.

This is Lavandula stoecha, also known as French Lavender and also as fat head lavender.

It requires very similar growing conditions to the English lavender. But it is more temperamental and so Lavender stoecha is more difficult to grow in less than ideal conditions. This will be the case in northern gardens which may be more chilly and wet. It can be a struggle, and I certainly found it performed poorly in these conditions.

Think of L. stoecha as the English lavender's more sensitive cousin. In perfect conditions, you can grow in well in the UK. Those perfect conditions are sunny, well drained soil which does not retain water, sheltered and not prone to frost, snow or cold winters. The more your garden differs from the perfect conditions, the less cooperative it becomes. A struggle.

Lavender stoecha, is variously described as both as H3 and H4 hardy, but those ratings are based on ideal growing conditions. 

You can ameliorate the growing conditions a little by growing it in a container, which will certainly make the growing medium drier. However, in areas of higher rainfall, it will suffer and also, if there is less sun, so container growing cannot overcome all obstacles.

Typically, it grows to around 60 x 60cms and is similar to English lavender prune lightly after flowering, or in March before the new growth.