A few weeks ago I brought an air freshener for my car after continued complaints from the family about the smell. Muddy wellies, wet dirty tools and the wet weather we’ve had has meant there is a constant damp smell, add into this the fact I had 8 bags of manure in it earlier this week…. you get the picture. Why I bothered getting the overpowering, supposedly citrus flavoured air freshener when all I really needed was a boot full of lavenders. This mornings trip to the nursery resulted in a unusually, beautifully fragrant journey in my car!
Unfortunately these plants are not for my garden but for some of the gardens I work in. Lavenders have a tendency to become leggy over time and they do not respond well to hard pruning so in most cases the best thing to do is to replace them, which is what this boot full will be doing. These are Lavandula angustifolia ‘Hidcote’ which is a bushy dwarf lavender often used for hedging because of its compact form. I am using these for hedging so I will be planting them at a spacing of somewhere between 30-40cm apart. They like loads of sun and poor, well drained soil so I will not be adding any fertiliser or the like when I plant.
Now is a great time to plant (warm soils mean plants can get nicely settled before winter) so if you have old, leggy lavenders in your garden perhaps think about pulling them out and replacing them with new vigorous plants that will be smothered in flower next summer.
