Lavender Plug Plants

Lavender is prized for its richly fragrant flowers and aromatic foliage. This easy-to-grow shrub thrives in a sunny spot, in free-draining soil or a container.

Lavender is best planted in April onwards, as the soil naturally warms up and when many fresh plants become available.  Lavender should never be planted direct into the ground in Late Autumn onwards, but instead should be planted into pots, and grown on in a cold or warm greenhouse, or conservatory, to avoid them getting too cold or wet. Although Hidcote is winter hardy, they will need at least one period of winter in order to be protected.

Lavender looks great in flower borders, herb gardens and as a low hedge or edging to a border. It also grows well in containers.

Lavender is a Mediterranean plant (in needs if not always in geographic origin) and needs lots of sun and fast-draining soil. It will survive in shady positions, but you will need to control how wet the soil gets, so better in pots, and if they dont do too well, move the pot. It prefers poor, dry or moderately fertile soil, including chalky and alkaline soils. Lavender will not thrive in heavy clay soil or any soil that becomes waterlogged over winter, so again if direct planting into the ground add some sand or grit to the soil to improve drainage.

When planting, dig over any free-draining soil and remove the weeds before planting. If your soil is heavy, improve the soil as previously mentioned, and maybe plant on a 20-30cm (8in-1ft) mound, ridge or in a raised bed where the roots will not sit in wet soil, or in pots.

Buying Lavender as plug plants, is by far the cheapest way to buy them. It does involve a little bit of work, but nothing major. You will need to buy some small pots, and these can be as little as a pound from Wilko. They will need to be planted into a well drained, riddled compost, into a pot no bigger than 6cm, 4cm is ideal, and should be watered on potting up, then only watered again once the compost has dried out, this encourages root growth. After a few weeks once the plants have grown more roots, they should be potted up into a larger pot say 1 litre or 9cm and encouraged to grow more roots before planted out.

There are two hardy (Hardy means they will flower again next year once they become winter hardy), English lavender varieties, Hidcote and Munstead. We sell an improved version of Hidcote called "Superior". these have been bred to flower longer and have a slightly more stronger flower colour. These are only available from us !

So what's the difference between the two ?  'Hidcote' has more tightly packed and darker coloured flowers than 'Munstead', whereas 'Munstead' flowers are lighter in colour and have more of a shaggy appearance.