Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Of all the perennials available to home gardeners, lavender seems to be one that's extremely enjoyable in the garden for several aspects.
Number 1, as you can see right here it's extremely colorful.
These light lavender colored flowers offer lots of color.
The gray-green foliage offers lots of contrast.
And the number one thing that's perhaps a strong selling point in lavender is its fragrance.
Highly fragrant foliage. Now lavender is not difficult to grow and maintain
If you just know a couple secrets about it. Number one, it enjoys full open sun.
Putting lavender in shade, you can be disappointed. It won't have as many flowers, it will be floppy, the gray color won't be there.
Does not look good. Number 2, and almost most important, is drainage. They demand
extremely sharp, good drainage. If you put them in a wet spot in the garden
they will probably do okay over the summer, but over the winter they tend to die. So they don't like
wet winter soil, so good, sharp drainage, full open sun,
and you can grow lavender that's as pretty as this particular border right here.
The other thing about lavender that's interesting, is that it tends to be a plant that comes up
very late in the springtime. You might see this plant and it looks very dead.
And I would say not to do a lot of pruning in early spring.
Wait until you start to see buds break. Then you know where the dead wood is, the live wood is, you make that cut,
and clean up your bed. So, again, it's a late emerging type of perennial.
And there are all kinds of cultivars of lavender on the market. Some with larger leaves,
some with a little more decorative flowers, but in any case, lavender is an extremely nice plant to grow.
I would position it somewhere you can enjoy the fragrance, next to a patio, a walkway, that kind of thing.
The other thing about lavender, it's extremely attractive to bees and butterflies.
As you can see right here, there's a number of bees working over this lavender.
With all the interest in maintaining our pollinators, this would probably be a good one to put in the garden.
Don't be fearful of them. Most bees are not interested in you if you leave them alone.
They are interested in gathering pollen off the plant.
Not that hard to grow. Pay attention, full sun, good drainage and enjoy in the house and in the garden.