how to trim a lavender patio tree

Don’t shear straight across.

You should wind up with a rounded mound. In frost free areas, your lavender plants may remain evergreen. Don’t forget to clean up the sides, too. As with English lavender, some experts say ‘never cut into the wood’ and others say ‘cut down into the wood to encourage new shoots’. This website occasionally uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website.

If you cut back lavender in its first year, it will put energy towards growing leaves rather than roots and this will make it a weaker plant in the long term.Once your lavender plant has had one year to establish itself, you’ll need to prune it once a year.
The flowers will continue to open after you harvest them and you will be able to enjoy both their beauty and their fragrance in bouquets or however you plant to make use of them.

12 Essential Spring Cleaning Tasks for the Garden Lavender likes heat, and many varieties won’t survive a cold winter. Since you did such a good job of creating a mounded shape in years 1 and 2, the plant is so full by year 3 that using your pruners is not the most efficient way to prune any longer. Firm the soil to remove air pockets. Follow the contours of the plant. If you get a second flush of blooms in the fall, you can go ahead and cut them back. Marie Iannotti is an author, photographer, and speaker with 27 years of experience as a Cornell Cooperative Extension Horticulture Educator and Master Gardener French lavender is shorter-lived and less hardy, so more likely to be affected by frost or poor weather. The top growth will serve as insulation, keeping Start your plants off right. The one thing to look out for here is wet soil. You never want your lavender to be sitting in wet soil, which will rot the roots. (2 cm) above the soil. The best time to prune is just as the flowers are starting to open. This will force the lavender to create new and more growth, which will not only keep the bush from going woody, but will also help to increase the amount of lavender available for harvest later in the season. It can seem severe, but pruning off all that top growth strengthens the roots and gives you a bushier, more compact plant

Properly pruning lavender will help your lavender produce more, stay healthier and more lovely. There will probably be some winter die back, but if you wait until the new growth starts, you will be able to see which stems are dead and can be pruned out. Don’t be afraid of this tough love. You’ll start trimming lavender in the second year that it is in the ground. The ancient art of topiary, shaping shrubs into geometric forms, was traditionally done in formal, estate gardens and took years to achieve perfection. layer of mulch (5 cm) to help retain moisture. Look for where the woody section turns to soft green growth and then prune about 2 - 3 inches above that.

Lavender plants need 3 years to hit maturity. By continuing to use our site you agree to our A small sythe or curved harvesting knife is a much better tool for this. Don’t try to do the whole plant at once.

The best time for when to prune lavender is in the spring just as the new growth is starting to come in.When pruning lavender, it’s important to start out with a sharp, The next step for trimming lavender is to prune one-third of the plant. All of this information is listed below. If you prune too drastically, they might not regrow.

How to Increase Blooms on Lavender Plants. Newly planted or very young plants need a chance to establish themselves, and in order to do this, they need to be able to focus on growing roots. They will grow healthier, bloom more profusely and live longer if you do a little By year 3, your plant should be quite large and blooming with abandon. The important thing to remember about first year plants is not to prune down into the woody part of the stems. If lavender isn’t pruned regularly, it will become woody and produce fewer fragrant leaves and flowers. The beauty of growing lavender in pots is that it can be moved to avoid dangerous conditions. Don’t wait too long to prune, though.

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In areas with freezing winter temperatures, you should hold off doing any hard pruning to your lavender plants until you see new growth starting, in the spring. Make sure it is growing in a well-draining site to begin with. The technique in this post is for English lavender, not French lavender but the method is similar. Winter is not kind to lavender plants. This will remove some of the top growth, but you don’t want all those flower stalks weighing the plants down.

When temperatures start to fall, bring your container grown lavender plants inside to tough the winter out by placing them in a window that receives full sun.
You can prune at harvesting time and prune to shape in early spring. They will grow healthier, bloom more profusely and live longer if you do a little annual pruning. If you follow these easy tips for how to prune lavender, you can’t go wrong.Find more gardening information on Gardening Know How:

You should see the new growth by the time

If you have a mild, but wet winter, check your lavender plants to make sure the tops are not holding excess water, which can cause the crowns to rot. Pruning lavender is important in keeping a lavender plant producing the type of fragrant foliage that most gardeners seek. If you’re wondering how to prune lavender and when to prune lavender at the correct time, have no fear.

Add your Lavender plant and fill the pot with soil within a couple of inches of the top. Grab the flower stalks by the handful and slice them off at the base. Your plant should be quite a bit larger this year, with more blooms. It would be difficult to find anyone without an emotional reaction to the delicate fragrance of lavender, or Lavandula. Just grab what you can hold.

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