Lavender For Your Garden

Lavender originates in a dry, Mediterranean climate. French lavender is generally larger, with longer stems, and better adapted if your soil is sandy and dry. English lavender is smaller, more compact, with shorter bloom stems, and tolerates a cooler, wetter climate.

Many varieties available here as plants are tolerant to USDA Zone 5, well within bounds for the average winter temperatures we have. If you’re going to grow lavender where you are, be sure to check the specific variety for the recommended climate zones. Some plants won’t like more humid conditions further south. 

They all look similar and smell wonderful. As I’m learning, the visual differences involve do with the height they grown, the color of the flowers and leaves, and the timing of their bloom.

 Even after I saw the different tag notations about varieties of lavender, I didn’t pay too much attention. Now that I’m mostly done with the newbie phase, I can see that I want to understand the differences between different categories of lavender, the better to help me match the right lavender to my goals for growing it.

 Some Examples of Genus Lavandula:

• True or common lavender (L. augustifolia): Munstead, Folgate, Hidcote, Big Time Blue, Elegance. Oils used for perfumes, also culinary use of the flowers.

• Spike or broad leaf lavender (L. latifolia): Flowers appear on longer spikes. Oils used for soaps.

• Lavandin, cross between true and spike lavender (Lavandula x intermedia): Phenomenal, Grosso. One benefit of these crosses appears to be improved winter hardiness. 

Lavender plants like full sun and well-drained soil. In the Great Lakes region here, we have lots of sandy loam, ideal for either French or English lavender. The latter category is more tolerant of wetter conditions.

Our biggest challenge with lavender seems to be the wet winter conditions. In the fall and early spring, gardens get soggy, which lavender doesn’t like. And I’ve found out the hard way that they appreciate some extra mulch to protect them in the winter.

Mulch for lavender should be sand, gravel or another light-colored type that will reflect light back into the plant and help it dry out quickly in the morning. This helps prevent fungus, which harms the plants.

• Evaluate your garden. Do you have space that is well-drained in full sun? Average pH? Then you have a place. If not, you can create this with inputs to your soil, or perhaps a dedicated raised bed or a container. I recommend a large one, because lavender looks best with several plants.

• Check your zone. Match the variety of lavender to your area. If you’re in a tropical or frigid climate, lavender might not be right for your garden, or might not be winter hardy, even with help (such as planting along a foundation, near a south-facing wall and mulching well). You’ll also want to check for resistance to fungal disease if your climate is even moderately humid.

• Choose a variety that meets your needs. Will you be growing primarily to attract and maintain pollinators like bees and butterflies, to add color, texture and fragrance to your garden, or to have your own source to explore culinary uses?

• Find a source for plants you can rely on. Nothing is more disappointing than realizing that a plant was not what you ordered, or mislabeled. We have several good garden centers in this area, and we return year after year to our favorites.

There are also a number of good online sources for plants and seeds. (In the US, you might like Baker Creek, Botanical Interests or Seeds n’ Such.) I like to choose vendors in the Midwest, because that’s where my garden is, and I expect to find many choices that will grow well in this area.

Lavender is pretty. It has an airy appearance with delicate flower spikes above gray-green narrow-leafed foliage. It makes a nice contrast with other plants, like pink petunias and dusty gray dichondra. Lavender gives a feeling of height without creating too much shade for other plants.

I like to plant my lavender in groups of three or more to give a good impression, because the flowers are tiny. A mass planting makes them stand out more. A long row or hedge is awesome when they are in bloom.

And lavender smells so good, too! The pollinators – butterflies and bees – like to visit the flowers. They are so tempted by the sweet fragrance that they will come up close to “human territory” near the house, and let you get close to view them (in most cases) because they are so entranced by the luscious nectar.

Critters that like to eat some our other plants don’t eat lavender, so that’s another benefit. No one likes their garden torn up by invaders. Pollinators are very welcome to enjoy all the nectar they can handle.

Watching the pollinators is fascinating!

I’ve seen more kinds of insects on lavender flowers than I can count: honey bees and bumble bees. Various kinds of butterflies, too. And the Ruby Throated Hummingbirds that we have in eastern North America are attracted by the sweet fragrance.

Lavender works well in a large planting or even a hedge. The more you plant, the more pollinating visitors you can attract.

I’m just learning how to reliably start plants from seeds, and I’ve read that lavender is difficult, though I see seed packets for several varieties offered in the garden section every year. My space to start my garden seeds is small, too, so I have just bought lavender plants up to now.

Next year, I will try to grow lavender from cuttings, starting with my existing plants and perhaps some newcomers, too. I have worked with rooting powder before, so I know how to use it. I also have had success with cuttings of other plants. Being careful to get the water and light in balance. Like Goldilocks: not too much, not to little.

Another way to propagate lavender is by layering, which might work even better than cuttings. You lay down a branch and pin it into the soil. The plant will root from the branch, and then you can separate it from the parent plant. 

As a gardener, I’ve never met a lavender I didn’t like. I’ve grown Munstead, Elegance, Folgate, Hidcote, Vicenza Blue, Big Time Blue and Phenomenal. My biggest challenge is winter hardiness. Some plants have not done as well as I would have liked.

I’ll keep adding to my lavender bed with different varieties, to spread out the bloom time over a longer season, and to experiment to see which ones do best in my particular garden.

I visited a local lavender farm for inspiration, after I’d been growing my own plants for a few years. This place is beautiful, and shows what you can do with space and the right growing conditions, especially if you want to get into lavender in a big way.

And farms like this have varieties that you might not have heard of. Often you can buy plants at these farms. The staff was also very helpful with information about which varieties would do best based on my questions.

Public gardens also offer inspiration on how to use lavender in your own garden, whether you want to include it in a section devoted to herbs or not. I have my lavender in two beds, both separate from my small culinary herb garden.

This arrangement works out well considering the sizes (somewhat small) and shapes (a lot of scattered raised beds) of my planting spaces.

There’s a lavender for just about every gardener, and no end to the enjoyment and beauty you can get from growing these lovely plants!