Loving Your Lavender (by pruning it once a year)

Our 90 pound Riley demonstrating lavender in need of a haircut (in another month after this picture was taken) (this is the awesome Hidcote 'giant' variety; read about the dwarf variety HERE)

In Seattle's neighborhoods, there are many people who replace their water-sucking lawns with wonderful, drought tolerant, low maintenance plants. Lavender is an excellent choice for this situation. However, many of the lavender plants you see in these gardens are an overgrown mess of twigs and bare wood, with spindly little flower stalks throughout the year.

You can avoid this demise of your beautiful lavender plant by walking out to it once a year and giving it a haircut. It's the best 10 minutes you can spend pruning a plant, compared to the love your lavender will lavish on you next summer.

After lavender blooms in July-ish, enjoy it for another month or so, until the flowers start to look a bit dreary and dry. Use a sharp pair of garden shears to clip the blooming stalks down to the first bunch of new leaves. The goal is to maintain a "mound" shape, so if you want to prune down to the second bunch of new leaves to keep this shape, feel free.

Your lavender will sprout beautiful new, healthy flower stalks next summer, and maintain it's orderly shape indefinitely.

Beware: If you have not been maintaining your lavender and it's already an overgrown mess with a lot of woody stems - you will need to remove the plant and start over. DO NOT PRUNE INTO THE HARD WOOD OF A LAVENDER PLANT. Similar to other evergreen plants, like juniper and cypress, it will NOT re-grow from old, woody branches.

For more info:

HERE's a great article