He recommends cutting no lower than a hand's breadth above the lowest green branches. Prune your lavender once or twice a year to maintain shape. Follow our full guide below to beautiful, ... Lavandula stoechas and French lavender. Prune off the flowers a second time in late summer if the plant flowers again. 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. This will stimulate new branches lower down on the woody stem. Pruning lavender is very important for ensuring a healthy plant that does not collapse under the weight of the flowers during bloom. If lavender isn’t pruned regularly, it will become woody and produce fewer fragrant leaves and flowers. French or Spanish lavender blooms mid-spring with the lifespan of three to five years. English lavenders require more pruning than the French ones, but not as much as the Spanish lavenders. 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. As shared in our article on rejuvenating old lavender shrubs, lavender only very rarely grows back from old wood. My French Lavender plant is only 14 months old, and it's lovely and bushy and a mass of flowers. How to prune French lavender. Lavender may flower a second time if you prune off the old flowers after the first flush of summer blooms. Like building a house a good foundation is the key to success in your garden. Pruning can be done when harvesting the … Avoid cutting off old growth, because those branches rarely send out new shoots. 4. That is why you should always prune out the dead and old growth first. Andy Van Havelingen of "Fine Gardening" magazine recommends removing about a third of the new growth early in the season. It is necessary to prune lavenders annually to promote more flowers and to increase the life span of the lavender. 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. 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. 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. Choose young two- to three-inch shoots that have just started to harden up. Pruning French Lavender. If there is significant regrowth, a second, lighter pruning can be done in late summer. The blooms do make nice lavender wands and potpourris. 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. For those of you kicking yourselves because you didn't get your lavender perfectly pruned last year, don't panic. Of the different types of lavender, the one that responds best to hard pruning is a type of French lavender called Lavandula dentata. 10 Plants for Year-round Containers. Once that third has regenerated, he then removes another third to encourage new growth at the base of the … Most California Prunes are of the improved French prune variety. Pruning Hydrangeas. There are two good times of the year … Take lavender cuttings from all your varieties every June and July. Sep 1, 2019 - Explore Michelle McFaun's board "Lavender pruning" on Pinterest. Pruning lavender is important in keeping a lavender plant producing the type of fragrant foliage that most gardeners seek. 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. They have shorter flowers with delicate petals that resemble butterflies. How to Trim a Lavender with Woody Stems. Pruning Lavender differs with the type of Lavender you're growing. Or is there a time in the year when I can hard prune it by about a 1/3, do they ever stop flowering ?. 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. May 8, 2018 - A Guide To Prune Lavender To Make It More Bushy. The flower heads on French lavender aren’t useful as a culinary lavender because the flavor has heavy camphor tones. Grab handfuls of stems and give them a good trim. And it blooms the earliest in spring. The basic rule of pruning lavender is not to trim into brown, dead wood. It is about 5 feet wide by one and a half feet wide. Pruning lavender (Question) I live in Toronto. 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. Painting Clay Pots. Advertisement. Prune French lavender in the spring once there's a flush of green on the plants and again after flowering. French lavender blooms almost year-round with flowers that are absolute pollinator magnets. To prune, cut with secateurs. It gets the morning sun and it is planted about ten feet away from a 29 year old Ginko tree and near the driveway. The Royal Horticultural Society has given it its prestigious Award of Garden Merit (AGM). Pruning lavender helps to trigger bushy growth, and gives you tons of flowers too. Jul 31, 2020 - Fragrant lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) supplies year-round garden interest, with aromatic flowers in summer and gray-green evergreen foliage. Looked after in this way the plant will be very short lived. A frost can kill off new plant growth. Pruning French lavender. Deadhead after the flowers open and begin to wilt if you want lavender blooms in the garden. Harvest flowers for drying before any of the blossoms start to turn brown. Second Year Lavender Pruning . 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. French lavenders are short-lived and usually only last for five years. Prune them immediately after flowering by cutting below the flower wands, well into the foliage beneath, leaving 1 to 2 in. Most Popular. The better the soil, the better your plants will grow. Jun 15, 2018 - Cutting back lavender plants is important for the health of the plant. Find out more about pruning French lavender. If you’re wondering how to prune lavender and when to prune lavender at the correct time, have no fear. These bloom in summer or fall and regenerate faster than their English counterparts, which means you need to prune them lightly but more frequently. For harvesting and drying, cut off the flowers when only two or three buds on the flower spikes have opened. Lavandula stoechas is commonly referred to as French lavender. Photo: Fionuala Campion. Ensure a good clean cut so that the lavender will always heal easily and is at less risk of winter loss. Dead heading is not included in the one third rule, because you are removing spent flowers not branches/stems. Cut the newer stems, but avoid cutting the woody part of the plants. Find out how to boost your stock of lavender plants, in Monty‘s video guide to taking cuttings of French lavender, ... pruning lavender. Your plant should be quite a bit larger this year, with more blooms. Best by far is to regularly trim lavender right from the start. Growing Lavender in Northern California Favorite varieties and steps to success for this beloved, shrubby perennial. Prune these lavender in spring when all frost is finished for the season. Here, the experts at Lavender Fields share their tips: Deadheading. Pruning. This prolongs the flowering and creates new growth the following April/May. 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! The reason for this is lack of or poor pruning. Prepare plants for winter by pruning. 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. All of this information is listed below. Most common ways of growing a youthful, round lavender. French Lavender has long flowering stems and enchanting, large flowers topped with purple bracts. 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. 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. Today I found this simple video which demonstrates how to prune a lavender plant to promote… It is possible to successfully prune lavender ‘Phenomenal’ in the Spring or Fall but I recommend Spring pruning. Individual plants dotted around the borders look excellent. Don’t shear straight across. Lavender Plants in the Ground. Every time the wind catches them they sway effortlessly. Lavandula stoechas: Sometimes called Spanish or French lavender, this is the least hardy of the lavenders. Traditionally, we prune lavenders to compact mounding forms that look attractive and yield maximum blooms. 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