Lavender Care Guide

When and where to plant your lavender and care for it year round

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Why do bees like lavender?

Lavender is an excellent plant for encouraging bees, butterflies and other beneficial pollinators into your garden. It is a rich food source with plenty of nectar and pollen, helping sustain bees throughout the summer when it flowers. Bees are attracted to lavender in particular because of its colour and smell. Bees can see violet colours better than humans can, and the lavender colour stands out to them very well. This combined with lavender’s strong and pleasant scent, helps attract bees to it. Bees that feed on lavender can use its nectar to make lavender honey too!

What type of lavender is best for bees?

There are many varieties of lavender to choose from, but English Lavender is one of the best types for attracting bees. English lavender has a long flowering period, so it will provide more food for bees over a longer period than other varieties. English lavender is also a hardier plant than French lavender, so will handle the cold and bad weather much better.

When & where to plant lavender

Lavender plants like the sun, so find a sunny spot in your garden for planting. English lavender can survive in partial shade, but will grow flower much better with full sun.

Lavender doesn’t like to stay wet for too long, so make sure your soil is well draining. If you think your garden won’t have enough drainage, you can put your lavender into plant pots, so that the water will drain out of the pot and help keep the soil drained and the roots not too wet – just make sure your pots have drainage holes in the bottom. This also makes lavender very drought tolerant during hotter parts of the year, and it doesn’t need too much watering.

It’s best to plant your lavender in the spring time, around April or May, as the soil is a little warmer. Always avoid planting lavender in the winter, as young plants can be killed off by the cold and damp soil as their roots will rot.

If planting your lavender in pots, use a large pot at least 30cm wide, to allow the lavender room to grow, and add some pebbles or perlite to the bottom of the pot to help the soil to drain.

If planting in the ground, find a sunny spot and leave a gap of at least 30cm between other plants, to allow the lavender room to grow. Water the lavender well at first to help it take to the soil.

How to maintain your lavender

English lavender is hardy enough to survive winter, provided that the soil is well drained. New lavender plants will need more watering in the first year, so make sure their soil doesn’t dry out over the summer as the plant matures. After the first year, the lavender will have matured and become more hardy, so takes little watering or maintenance from that point. Provided their soil gets some water during the hottest part of the year, the lavender will thrive.

Lavender is tolerant of low nutrient soil, so doesn’t require and feeding or extra nutrients added to its soil. You can lightly prune your lavender in the summer to encourage more growth, but lavender doesn’t like to be too heavily pruned, and wooden stems may struggle to produce flowers again if cut back too harshly. Simply prune any spent flowers at the end of summer, avoiding cutting into woody stems, and your lavender will be ready to come back again next summer.

Garden design styles

Lavender is a beautiful plant for cottage style gardens, adding colour and softness to your borders. They can be planted in rows to make a border on their own for a more formal style, or mixed with other flowers and shrubs too to create texture and vibrancy for a more country feel.

Lavender grows well in pots too, making them a good addition to patios and balconies, while adding a beautiful scent to your space too.

Overall, lavender is a great all-rounder that can fit into most garden styles and types, and particularly suits cottage and country style designs.

Summary

Lavender is a low maintenance plant, requiring little watering or nutrients. There for few pests that feed on lavender, so they don’t need any pesticide treatments – another reason they are very bee friendly!

Provided lavender has adequate sun and free draining soil, it will grow well and look after its self. If the soil becomes too wet however, lavender is prone to root rot and the whole plant will begin to perish. So the main focus for lavender is its free draining soil.

Find more bee-friendly plant care guides here.