Plants of the Month: May

Lavender

Our plant of the month is the lavender. This timeless favourite is a low maintenance shrub with beautiful colour and scent. Loved for its aromatic foliage and flower displays, lavender is a favourite of butterflies and bees. Being Mediterranean, most lavender is hardy and tolerates drought and difficult conditions. 

Two of the best loved lavender varieties are Hidcote and Munstead. They produce fragrant flowers and are at home in garden borders or containers. Hidcote does well in our climate and remains compact. It’s a bushy dwarf evergreen shrub with small deep violet-purple flowers. It’s not as heat or drought tolerant as other lavenders. 

Munstead is another English variety of lavender, named after Munstead Woods, the home of garden designer Gertrude Jekyll. Munstead is bigger than Hidcote lavender and tolerates summer heat the best of all English lavenders. It does best in a sunny position, and during a cold winter would benefit from being in a sheltered spot.

French lavender tends to be large and fast-growing, with a variety of colour, fragrance and flower heads. It does best when kept under 90cm/three feet high, including the blooms. Give it a good prune four or five weeks into the bloom cycle, which keeps it tidy and encourages a second set of flowers. 

Lavender prefers well-draining soil. If your soil is heavy, add horticultural grit to the planting hole, mixed with compost. Although many lavender varieties are drought tolerant, keep it watered in the first season to help it become established. If you have a large space, you can plant three together for a bigger impact. They also look stunning planted in a line to edge a path or in a narrow garden border. They tend to spread out, so position them about 30cm apart.

At the end of the flowering season, prune your lavender with shears. Remove the flower stalks and cut back to just above the healthy growth. Avoid cutting into the older, woody stems as it only grows from the newer shoots and not the older base. Doing this will give the lavender a neat shape over the winter and it will be ready to grow back next year. 

Garsons card holders can receive 20% off lavender in the garden centre throughout May.