Love You Lavender
Agarden without lavender is a garden one plant short of a complete border and a more agreeable plant is hard to find.
She is ever-silvergreen, her size is easily checked and she doesn’t mind being clipped.
She lasts a long time, produces pretty, scented flowers and gets on well with her neighbours. But she is not just a pretty face.
She is a full-on industry, producing soap, oil, bubble baths and body lotions along with eau de toilette, shower gels and face creams.
Not forgetting scented candles and incense sticks, herbal teas and honey too, and that’s before you have bought a scented cushion, a drying up cloth or a lucky charm.
The little leaves battle through all seasons and the blue flowers burst onto the garden stage at the height of summer attracting bees and butterflies alike.
It’s easy to understand the draw of this sweetly scented maiden. She is seductive in a way unto herself.
Roses may bankroll your feelings for romance, honeysuckle may sweeten
your thoughts but it is lavender that not only has scented notes but offers to decrease blood pressure, steady the heart rate and cool skin temperature.
Eat your heart out dock leaf.
She has a life span of about six or seven years after which time she becomes a bit leggy depending on her maintenance.
If there is space in the border try planting perovskia atriplicifolia (Russian sage) behind or amongst the lavenders.
Flowering with tall, long blue spires and sympathetic silver leaves they will carry the show on long after lavender has surrendered her assets to a scented pillow case.
Although lavender belongs to the lamiaceae family which includes basil, mint, rosemary, sage, savory, marjoram, oregano, hyssop and thyme, we tend to think of English lavender (lavandula angustifolia) and French lavender (lavandula stoechas) as the main players.
There is however, a disreputable cousin called lavandin – a cross-breed, with longer, more pointed flower spikes arriving later in the season which is occasionally known by a more impolite name...