The fields where purple reigns...
Lavender is putting on a dazzling display – and you don’t have to be in Provence to cherish it
LAST summer, I fulfilled an ambition to saunter through a lavender field. It was a lovely sunny day in mid-July, and the gently rolling, ten-acre landscape was a sea of purple under a cloudless cobalt-blue sky. Row upon row of lavender plants stretched to the horizon, with tall spikes of flowers that swayed elegantly in the breeze.
It was truly a feast for the eyes, but the experience was about to get even better.
As I walked along the dusty paths between rows, I found plants buzzing with life from industrious bees, butterflies and hoverflies, while the scent from tens of thousands of lavender plants grown en masse was almost overpowering.
Despite this plant’s close association with the sun-kissed Mediterranean, I hadn’t
It gives instant impact and will earn its keep for 15 to 20 years
travelled to Italy, Spain or the South of France, where more than 50,000 acres of lavender are grown in Provence alone for the perfume industry. In fact, my field was in West Sussex, just 15 miles from my home on the South Coast.
The variety that turned my head and nose was ‘Maillette’, a popular variety that’s among 420 different ones available in the UK. Snap up established plants now and they’ll provide impact this summer, and continue to earn their keep for 15 to 20 years, as long as they are set in the right position and trimmed correctly.
Native largely to North Africa, the Mediterranean and south-west Asia, lavender has been cultivated for some 2,500 years. Oil infused with its flowers was valued by the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians – legend has it that Cleopatra rubbed her body in the stuff to seduce Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.
Known botanically as lavandula, plants arrived here with the Romans. Both common and scientific names come from the Latin word lavare, meaning to wash.
In ancient Rome, leaves and flowers were used to perfume freshly washed clothes and in medieval Britain, washer women were even called lavenders. The popularity of these aromatic, evergreen shrubs soared during the 1500s, when Elizabeth I encouraged the establishment of commercial lavender farms.
A species from northern Spain (Lavandula angustifolia) was so widely grown on our shores that it eventually took on the common name of English lavender.
Over the years, breeding work on wild species has led to plants that vary in height, from 12in to 3ft, with flowers in shades of white, green, yellow, pink, red and purple. The tiny blooms are held in slender, conical or plump heads on slim stalks and appear between May and late September, depending on variety. As a family, lavenders can be divided into three main groups. English lavenders are tough and easy, while French lavenders (Lavandula stoechas) are less hardy but showier thanks to the colourful ‘ears’ that perch on flower heads. Lavandins (L. x intermedia) are tough, taller than the rest and later-flowering.
Due to their background, lavenders need a sunny spot with light, well-drained soil. English lavenders make excellent dwarf hedges along a path or edging for a bed, while others are ideal in beds, borders and gravel gardens. Alternatively, raise in pots filled with loam-based compost, such as John Innes No3. Lavenders aren’t demanding, but they do need pruning regularly. Leave them to their own devices and a compact, floriferous shrub that could provide a couple of decades of pleasure will turn into an untidy, woody thing that flowers poorly and is likely to be evicted after just a few years.
The key to keeping lavenders in shape is to prune them twice a year, rather than the traditional once.
Give them their first cut immediately after flowering, removing spent flower stems and about an inch of growth to retain a rounded shape. Prune plants lightly again in early spring if looking a bit untidy.
Anyone who has grown lavender will have been told not to cut back into old wood, which makes restoring overgrown plants impossible.
While it’s true that lavenders are reluctant to produce fresh growth from bare stems, if any embryonic shoots are present, simply cut others back to this new growth.