Read this article to find out when to prune lavender plants, and learn exactly how to prune lavender step-by-step to avoid over pruning. The small shrubs grow in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 5 through 9, where they thrive with very little maintenance beyond pruning. The Royal Horticultural Society has given it its prestigious Award of Garden Merit (AGM). Pruning lavender is important in keeping a lavender plant producing the type of fragrant foliage that most gardeners seek. http://learn-how-to-garden.comThe autumn is a perfect time for pruning your Lavender to keep it healthly and productive. French Lavender has long flowering stems and enchanting, large flowers topped with purple bracts. How to Prune Hydrangeas. Prune your lavender once or twice a year to maintain shape. It is about 5 feet wide by one and a half feet wide. English lavenders require more pruning than the French ones, but not as much as the Spanish lavenders. The blooms do make nice lavender wands and potpourris. Prune French lavender in the spring once there's a flush of green on the plants and again after flowering. Painting Clay Pots. These bloom in summer or fall and regenerate faster than their English counterparts, which means you need to prune them lightly but more frequently. Every time the wind catches them they sway effortlessly. Individual plants dotted around the borders look excellent. Cut the newer stems, but avoid cutting the woody part of the plants. While the plant is in bloom, usually in mid-summer, gather up the flower stalks and once again prune the plant back to 2 - 3 inches above where the soft, green growth begins on the lower part of the plant. A good guide to determine what is a 1/3 is to lay the cuttings near the plant you are pruning and when the pile is 1/3 of the original size stop pruning. French lavenders are short-lived and usually only last for five years. Simon Charlesworth is considered an expert on lavender cultivation in Europe ( his Downderry nursery is on the web). Find out how to boost your stock of lavender plants, in Monty‘s video guide to taking cuttings of French lavender, ... pruning lavender. The reason for this is lack of or poor pruning. The dotted line in the illustration above shows you how to cut foliage and any flowers back by one-third to one half before planting. Once harvesting has been completed for the season (ex. Pruning lavender helps to trigger bushy growth, and gives you tons of flowers too. Pruning can be done when harvesting the … Prune French lavender plants at the end of the season to keep them attractive and maintain a manageable size. Pruning Lavender differs with the type of Lavender you're growing. They have shorter flowers with delicate petals that resemble butterflies. We prune lavenders to stimulate new green growth, which produces flowers, and to slow the formation of older woody growth, which does not produce flowers. Lavandula angustifolia - also called English Lavender, True Lavender or Common Lavender: These Lavenders usually bloom once, but may experience a weak second flush after pruning. 3. Choose young two- to three-inch shoots that have just started to harden up. Lavender Plants in the Ground. All of this information is listed below. Lavender may flower a second time if you prune off the old flowers after the first flush of summer blooms. French lavender blooms almost year-round with flowers that are absolute pollinator magnets. Best rule of thumb is when it finishes flowering, that’s the perfect time to prune. Jun 15, 2018 - Cutting back lavender plants is important for the health of the plant. Lavender can be become very leggy and bear few flowers. This variety produces plums that are specifically developed to become prunes. Pruning French lavender. Dead heading is not included in the one third rule, because you are removing spent flowers not branches/stems. There is always next year to prune back more if necessary. That is why you should always prune out the dead and old growth first. Growing Lavender in Northern California Favorite varieties and steps to success for this beloved, shrubby perennial. Pruning the lavender plant puzzles many gardeners, so let us take a look at best practices. Follow our full guide below to beautiful, ... Lavandula stoechas and French lavender. Pruning lavender in late summer to fall helps open the plant’s interior to allow good air circulation and also removes some of the branches, which can ultimately help prevent winter damage. This prolongs the flowering and creates new growth the following April/May. And it blooms the earliest in spring. It is necessary to prune lavenders annually to promote more flowers and to increase the life span of the lavender. Don’t shear straight across. Grab handfuls of stems and give them a good trim. It’s an aromatic dwarf shrub with narrow, greyish leaves, and bears dense, oval heads of small purple flowers topped with with a tuft of purple bracts. Here, the experts at Lavender Fields share their tips: Deadheading. He recommends cutting no lower than a hand's breadth above the lowest green branches. Pruning French lavender is possible, but must be exclusively performed on growth that still bears leaves. Start pruning lavender when it’s small to encourage your new plant to focus on making more roots and branching stems, which results in a nice mounded habit later. French or Spanish lavender blooms mid-spring with the lifespan of three to five years. Because of its fragility, lightly prune this lavender—never too close to the base—just after the first flowering. Jul 31, 2020 - Fragrant lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) supplies year-round garden interest, with aromatic flowers in summer and gray-green evergreen foliage. Of the different types of lavender, the one that responds best to hard pruning is a type of French lavender called Lavandula dentata. Today I found this simple video which demonstrates how to prune a lavender plant to promote… How to prune French lavender. Ensure a good clean cut so that the lavender will always heal easily and is at less risk of winter loss. If you’re wondering how to prune lavender and when to prune lavender at the correct time, have no fear. This will stimulate new branches lower down on the woody stem. I have a patch of lavender (sorry I don’t have the Latin name) in the flower bed on my front lawn. Deadhead French lavender regularly throughout the summer. Lavandula stoechas is commonly referred to as French lavender. English varieties tend to flower in the warmer months, whereas French lavender will often flower in winter. Follow the contours of the plant. Pruning lavender (Question) I live in Toronto. Second Year Lavender Pruning . By Fionuala Campion. It gets the morning sun and it is planted about ten feet away from a 29 year old Ginko tree and near the driveway. If lavender isn’t pruned regularly, it will become woody and produce fewer fragrant leaves and flowers. My French Lavender plant is only 14 months old, and it's lovely and bushy and a mass of flowers. How to trim your lavender shrubs to avoid overgrowth. Taking lavender cuttings. Prune these lavender in spring when all frost is finished for the season. 10 Minute GardenerMark Abbott-Compton Harvest flowers for drying before any of the blossoms start to turn brown. The better the soil, the better your plants will grow. Like building a house a good foundation is the key to success in your garden. Pruning lavender is very important for ensuring a healthy plant that does not collapse under the weight of the flowers during bloom. Unlike many perennial plants and shrubs that can be pruned now, it is best to wait to prune lavender until after bloom in spring or in early fall before any danger of frost. Many gardeners just deadhead hardy types which leads to leggy plants and few flowers. Take lavender cuttings from all your varieties every June and July. Lavender only flowers on the stems of new seasons growth. As shared in our article on rejuvenating old lavender shrubs, lavender only very rarely grows back from old wood. See more ideas about lavender, growing lavender, lavender plant. If there is significant regrowth, a second, lighter pruning can be done in late summer. For those of you kicking yourselves because you didn't get your lavender perfectly pruned last year, don't panic. There are two good times of the year … It is possible to successfully prune lavender ‘Phenomenal’ in the Spring or Fall but I recommend Spring pruning. 4. However, this can be a fun and easy job and should be carried out twice a year — once lightly after flowering and again later to neaten summer's growth. Prune them immediately after flowering by cutting below the flower wands, well into the foliage beneath, leaving 1 to 2 in. Traditionally, we prune lavenders to compact mounding forms that look attractive and yield maximum blooms. Once that third has regenerated, he then removes another third to encourage new growth at the base of the … It isn’t hard to learn how to trim a lavender with woody stems. So it is certainly an example that a lavender can recover well from very hard pruning. The best practice is to prune lightly just after your French lavender has had its first flowering, and then keep deadheading and shaping throughout the growing season. Pruning French Lavender. Jun 22, 2020 12:03am. It has always had flowers on it so when do I prune it, do I just give it a trim every so often. Experience shows that pruning is best done after flower harvest in Ontario. Find out more about pruning French lavender. Looked after in this way the plant will be very short lived. The flower heads on French lavender aren’t useful as a culinary lavender because the flavor has heavy camphor tones. Pruning. Most common ways of growing a youthful, round lavender. In fact, despite the fact that many gardeners successfully trim their lavender in fall, our BC Master Gardeners actually recommend pruning these plants when they start to wake up in the springtime. Andy Van Havelingen of "Fine Gardening" magazine recommends removing about a third of the new growth early in the season. How to Trim a Lavender with Woody Stems. Avoid cutting off old growth, because those branches rarely send out new shoots. Spanish lavender has a short, full flower spike with open petals at the top, distinguishing it from other types. How to prune lavender. Prepare plants for winter by pruning. Advertisement. Lavandula stoechas: Sometimes called Spanish or French lavender, this is the least hardy of the lavenders. Pruning lavender in spring is also sometimes necessary in coldest regions to remove stems that suffer winter damage. When California Prune growers plant a prune plum tree, they have four-to-six-years to wait before they see their labor bear fruit—literally! Your plant should be quite a bit larger this year, with more blooms. Photo: Fionuala Campion. Favor pruning only on young, tender shoots rather than old, hard wood. Most Popular. The basic rule of pruning lavender is not to trim into brown, dead wood. you have cut off all the lavender flower blooms), a light pruning to create a mound can help to minimize damage by snow. Lavender can grow out of control unless it is forced into submission! Best by far is to regularly trim lavender right from the start. Being a more fragile variety, it is best to lightly prune French lavender, making sure you never cut into the bare wood as this could kill your plant. 10 Plants for Year-round Containers. Or is there a time in the year when I can hard prune it by about a 1/3, do they ever stop flowering ?. If you prune dry wood, it won’t grow back… At the end of winter, prune as you wish, but follow the rounded shape of the plant. Sep 1, 2019 - Explore Michelle McFaun's board "Lavender pruning" on Pinterest. A frost can kill off new plant growth. For harvesting and drying, cut off the flowers when only two or three buds on the flower spikes have opened. Deadhead after the flowers open and begin to wilt if you want lavender blooms in the garden. lavender. Pruning Hydrangeas. Prune off the flowers a second time in late summer if the plant flowers again. To prune, cut with secateurs. Most California Prunes are of the improved French prune variety. May 8, 2018 - A Guide To Prune Lavender To Make It More Bushy.