Maybe I'm alone here, but I get really enamored with plants at the nursery and sometimes forget to do my homework. In this case, I saw a tag that said "French Lavender" and assumed my garden would smell like Provence. Uh, not quite.
Let's start out by saying, one thing all lavender loves is a sunny, open spot with well-draining soil. These plants are drought tolerant and pest resistant. If you have very clay soil, amending it with some sand and mulch will help immensely with drainage and keep your lavender plants happy.
The lavender I planted (pictured above) is French lavender (L. dententa) and is known for its showy foliage and purple blooms, but isn't particularly fragrant. It has a very clean, green scent to it, but certainly not the scent we have come to associate with the name. It can grow to nearly 3 feet in height and is mostly planted for decorative purposes. I tend to have trouble slowing down, so I thought that growing lavender to cut and bring indoors would be a good way to encourage relaxation. Obviously I was pretty bummed out when I realized I had planted the wrong variety.
English lavender is what we most commonly associate with the lavender fragrance and for culinary purposes. It can grow 2 to 3 feet in height and commonly has medium purple flowers (though some varieties have pink, white or blue flowers). If you're planning on using your lavender for cooking or craft projects, the English varieties are the way to go.
Spanish lavender has deep purple pinecone-shaped flowers and silver grey foliage. They're great for more humid climates and have a piney, clean fragrance...but not quite the typical scent we associate with lavender. They are often confused with French lavender, but these blooms are more intensely colored. They grow 1 1/2 - 2 feet tall and require pruning after the flowers fade.
For the sweetest of all the English lavenders, Martha Stewart recommends Hidcote lavender. Two more fragrant varieties are Provence lavender (Lavandula x intermedia 'Provence'), which despite its name, hails from Canada and Grosso lavender (Lavandula x intermedia 'Grosso').
Be sure to check what will work best in your hardiness zone, but this should be a good primer so you don't repeat my mistake!
(Image: Michelle Chin)
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I've been meaning to plant some lavender, so this is very helpful—thank you! I find that gardening involves much learning from mistakes. :)
Great post! I wanted to plant lavendar (English Lavendar, I know now) and didn't think there were so many varieties.
I planted some lavender, but since I took it from an abandoned garden, I have no idea which variety it is... I think I'll wait untill it blooms to see...
I got a smart phone just so I could look up plants at the nursery before I purchased---because sometimes, no matter how pretty they look at the store, they're not what they appear to be. Looking plants up before I put them in my shopping cart has saved me lots of dollars and heartache!
Four or six inch pots of lavender are pretty inexpensive. I chose two varieties last year, both of which flowered beautifully, and smelled great, and were supposed to work well in our hostile climate conditions. One made it through the scorching summer and the freezing winter intact, and one had to be cut to the ground because it froze, and is now struggling back. Guess which one I'm taking cuttings from this year to root more plants?
I planted french lavender at BF's house and its just lovely. And it sure has a lavender scent. It might not be strong, but its certainly there. Its thriving in on the south facing side of his LA home, with flowers pretty much year round.
I make sure to get lavender where they sell herbs. If its labeled as Lavender in the herb section its the fragrant kinds. Noticed about the French Lavender not long ago at our home depot. Mine is fragrant and from the other herbs there, but in the regular garden section they were selling French Lavender and it indeed was different plants.
Do you think it would do well in window boxes?
I have a sun-drenched deck that gets full sun all day long, so every year I try to test different drought-resistant plants.
'Grosso' is my personal favorite... I believe that it and 'Provence' are two that are commonly grown for perfume production in France. It also does a little bit better in wetter soils.
One of the tricks that I did at my old house (heavy clay, wet ground) was to build up a mound that was about 10" high and 18+" in diameter, and plant the smaller lavender plant in that. Yes, it looked a little funny until the lavender got big enough to cover the mound. But it did a great job of letting the roots drain.