Lavender is a classic plant prized as both a flower and an herb. It is a classic plant that makes its way into gardens all over the world. Just the mere mention of lavender calls to mind its timeless fragrance. However, to continue enjoying the scent and the blooms, annual pruning is in order.
Why Prune Lavender?
Lavender has a tendency to get woody as it ages. If left to its own devices, it will grow woody faster, producing fewer and fewer blooms over time. The whole plant becomes bedraggled and rather unappealing.
Woody lavender is also more susceptible to frost damage and water rot. It loses its flexibility and cracks and breaks easily, opening up the plant to disease.
Not only will an annual clean-up keep your lavender bushes looking neat and tidy, but this regular pruning will also slow down how quickly the plant ages.
There’s no need to be intimidated when it comes to pruning lavender. It’s quite easy to do, hard to mess up, and it doesn’t take much time to ensure beautiful, healthy shrubs year after year.
If you’ve let your lavender go a bit and it’s become very woody, then pruning won’t help much. However, keep reading as I have a trick at the end to reinvigorate and grow new plants from old woody ones.
When To Prune Lavender
Ideally, lavender should be pruned every year. But as we all know, these things sometimes get away from us. Just don’t let it go more than one year between pruning.
You can give lavender shrubs a quick once over in the spring and prune out any cold weather-damaged areas. But beyond that, you should wait and prune your lavender once the plant has finished blooming. For most areas, this will be late summer, often in August or September.
If you get an especially hot and dry summer, you might end up with a plant that’s finished blooming much earlier. Go ahead and prune it, and you’ll likely end up with a second smaller flush of blooms. You can then prune it again before fall.
Or you can wait and prune off the spent blooms and then prune the plant in late summer as usual.
Of course, I always enjoy snipping and enjoying fresh lavender throughout my home all summer long. If you need some inspiration for what to do with lavender, have a look here.
You’ll know it’s time to prune your plant when all of the blooms have faded to gray and the plant is no longer producing buds. I generally keep an eye on the pollinators. When they skip over my lavender and opt for other flowering plants nearby, I know it’s time to prune.
A quick note: Don’t pitch those spent blossoms into the compost. Although they aren’t the usual beautiful purple, they still smell lovely. I trim off the old blooms, tuck them in a paper bag, and put them in my linen closet and the towel basket in my bathroom.
How Much Should You Take Off Your Plants?
Use clean and sterilized pruners to cut back the growth from this year. However, you want to ensure you leave some of the new, green growth behind. In general, you can cut back 2/3 of the new growth.
A good rule of thumb is to check the woody part of the plant. You’ll see new leaves growing at the topmost part of the woody growth. Prune anything above that, and you’re good to go. You’ll do better cutting a little harder than you would if you’re too hesitant to take too much off.
Unless you lop off all the green stuff, leaving only woody stubs, it’s hard to mess this up.
Neat and Tidy or Wild and Rangy?
Before you start trimming away, take a moment to consider the size and shape of your lavender. Is your garden kept neat and tidy, with everything pruned to a specific size and shape? Or do you prefer a more naturalized look, with plants that look a bit less tame?
Keep this in mind as you cut so you can keep the shape you’re hoping to achieve.
And finally, if you’ve let your lavender go for too long and it’s quite woody, I’ve got a way for you to grow new, fresh plants without much effort on your part.
Propagating Old Woody Lavender Through Layering
Even with consistent pruning each year, eventually, lavender will become woody at its base and be less prolific. If you’ve got a few plants that are more wood than green, there’s no need to yank it all out and start over again. You can create new lavender plants using the woody growth through a process called layering.
Choose a woody branch towards the bottom of the plant. Look for one that’s growing out a bit from the crown. Using your fingernail or a clean knife, scrape and scratch the bottom of the stem that’s facing the ground. You want to expose the greenish-white inner cambium (the layer beneath the bark). Now press the exposed stem down into the ground, covering it with soil. Use a landscaping pin or a rock to keep the stem in place so it’s touching the soil. Water it well and keep this area moist.
After a few weeks, this piece of stem will produce roots and new growth.
This is an easy and cheap way of replacing older lavender plants. Once the stem roots and produces new growth, you can cut out and remove the old woody growth that is no longer producing flowers. Voila! New lavender plants without messing about with propagating stem cuttings or buying new plants.
Layering lavender is also an excellent way to get more lavender plants for free from healthy plants. (Even if they aren’t old and woody.) Choose a couple of stems that are starting to get a little woody and layer those stems. Once they have rooted, you can cut them from the main plant, dig them up and transplant them.
Pruning lavender is pretty easy, and once you give it a go, you’ll see it’s hard to screw up. Giving it a good trim annually is the surest way to keep lavender fresh and green and growing for many years to come.
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