A Guide to Growing Lovely Lavender 🌿

Lavender is the heart of a sensory garden, known for its calming scent, beautiful purple spikes, and its ability to attract pollinators. It's a wonderfully resilient plant that thrives on a bit of neglect, making it a perfect choice for both new and experienced gardeners.

Ready to bring a touch of Provence to your garden? Here's how.

Choosing Your Lavender

While all lavender is lovely, there are a few common types you'll find, each with slightly different needs and characteristics.

English Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia): This is the most popular and hardiest variety, known for its sweet fragrance and excellent use in cooking and crafts. It's a great choice for colder climates.
French Lavender (Lavandula stoechas): Instantly recognizable by the "bunny ear" petals on top of its flower heads. It blooms earlier than English lavender but is less cold-hardy.
Spanish Lavender (Lavandula dentata): Known for its toothed-edge leaves and year-round blooming in warmer climates.

The Recipe for Happy Lavender

Lavender has three simple, non-negotiable requirements for success.

1. Full, Unrelenting Sun: Find the sunniest, hottest spot in your garden. Lavender needs at least 8 hours of direct sun per day to produce its iconic flowers and intense aroma.

2. Excellent Drainage: This is the most crucial rule. Lavender's roots will rot in heavy, wet soil. It thrives in sandy or gravelly soil. If you have heavy clay, consider planting it in a raised bed or a container filled with a fast-draining potting mix.

3. Good Air Circulation: Give your plants space to breathe to prevent fungal issues.

How to Plant:

Dig a hole just as deep as the pot and twice as wide.
If your soil is heavy, mix in a handful of small gravel or sand to improve drainage.
Place the plant in the hole, ensuring the crown (where the stem meets the roots) is slightly above the soil line.
Backfill with soil and water lightly.

✨ Florabella Tip: Use the Florabella garden map to find your sunniest spot and log your new lavender plant there.

The "Less is More" Care Routine

This is where many gardeners go wrong. Lavender is a drought-tolerant Mediterranean plant that hates being fussed over.

Watering: This is key. For the first year, water once or twice a week to help it get established. After that, established lavender is very drought-resistant and may only need watering every few weeks during a dry spell. Always let the soil dry out completely between waterings. Overwatering is the #1 killer of lavender.
Feeding: Do not fertilize your lavender. It prefers "lean" soil and adding compost or fertilizer can lead to lots of leaves but very few flowers.
Mulching: Use rock or pea gravel as mulch. Organic mulches like bark can trap too much moisture around the plant's base.

✨ Florabella Tip: It's easy to overwater. Set a reminder in your Florabella calendar for every two weeks to check the soil, not necessarily to water.

Pruning for a Perfect Shape

Pruning is essential to prevent your lavender from becoming woody and sparse.

When: Prune your lavender once a year, right after its first flush of flowers has faded.
How: Grab a handful of the flower stems and, using sharp shears, cut back the entire plant by about one-third. Be sure to leave at least a few inches of green growth—never cut back into the old, woody part of the stem, as it may not grow back.

This annual "haircut" encourages a mounded, bushy shape and a spectacular flower show next season.

Harvesting Your Lavender

For the best fragrance, harvest your lavender just as the flower buds have swollen but before they fully open.

In the morning, when the oils are most concentrated, cut the flower stalks long.
Gather the cuttings into small bundles and hang them upside down in a cool, dark, dry place.
Once dried, you can gently strip the buds from the stems to use in sachets, recipes, or tea.

Enjoy the calming presence of your homegrown lavender!