Home Life & Style Lavender plants ‘bloom vigorously’ if you avoid gardening expert’s 3 ‘biggest’ mistakes

Lavender plants ‘bloom vigorously’ if you avoid gardening expert’s 3 ‘biggest’ mistakes


Lavender is the perfect plant to give gardens or balconies a summer vibe with their superb purple blossoms and sweet scent. 

However, even these hardy shrubs have their pitfalls, and gardeners are being warned about some critical errors in nurturing them.

A green-fingered expert has spilt the beans on the “biggest mistakes” you could make with this plant, helping to ensure your lavender thrives for years.

Kathrin Brunner from myGarden.com has dished out sage advice: “For lavender to grow healthily and bloom vigorously, there are three biggest mistakes you need to avoid when planting and caring for it.”

Pruning mishaps top the list of botches, as per the gardening whizz. It’s crucial to trim lavender to stop wild growth and foster new branches.

Kathrin explained: “If you neglect this point or even allow the semi-shrub to grow for years untouched, you will notice that your plant grows bare from the bottom and ultimately falls apart – this also applies to lavender in a pot.”

She added a stark warning: “Once it has aged, pruning will do little to rectify this mistake. New shoots will only sprout sparsely from woody branches and the flowerage will also diminish.”

Hence, she emphasised that “correct pruning is essential for vigorous, compact growth”.

Gardeners should “lightly prune back” their lavender after it flowers, usually towards the end of August, by trimming all the shoots by about one-third using a hedge trimmer.

Come springtime, Kathrin recommended: “As soon as it is warm enough in the spring and no more permafrost is expected, cut back the semi-shrub by about two-thirds on hand-height shoots.”

She urged: “Always make sure that you leave a little bit of the leaved shoots and do not cut into the wood – lavender does not usually grow shoots again from leafless branches that are a few years old.”

Another common blunder is planting lavender in the wrong spot or soil type. Even with something as simple as planting lavender, there’s room for error – the Mediterranean plant detests shade, according to the pro. Yet, it “thrives” in sunny, warm spots away from wind and drafts, the expert notes.

Kathrin pointed out: “The soil must be low in nutrients and very permeable, as lavender has an extremely sensitive reaction to excess moisture.”

She explains that while they can cope with dry conditions, they wilt if waterlogged, suggesting a drainage layer in the planting hole or pot to prevent this. “If the soil is too wet and has too many nutrients, this can also lead to plants being more sensitive to frost,” she added.

And the last thing to avoid? Incorrectly fertilising your lavender, says the gardening guru. Over-fertilising lavender could lead to an overgrowth of foliage and a lack of flowers, particularly if the fertiliser is nitrogen-rich, or it could even kill the plant.

Kathrin warned: “If you believe you are doing your lavender plant a favour with fertiliser, you are mistaken. Quite the opposite. Too much fertiliser makes the plants grow excessively, i.e. with unnatural luxuriance, and become lazy-flowerers that ultimately lose their stability.”

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