Re: lavender hard-pruned

Diane Whitehead wrote:
> I seem to recall reading in numerous books that one should never
> hard-prune a lavender.  However, I had a large old lavender that came
>  with a name - maybe Hidcote, but I was never sure whether it was
> correctly named.  Its branches covered up my small collection of
> dianthus in one direction  and almost blocked the path in another.
> Last winter I chopped it back and strewed the paths with the branches
> - it was aromatic wherever I walked.
>
> I had left two small branches, but the larger ones, thicker than my
> thumb, were all cut off leaving stubs of perhaps 15 cm.  The new
> leaves on both the remaining small branches are bigger than normal,
> and there are even larger new leaves on the trunk, so many that the
> trunk is completely hidden.
>
> Maybe if a lavender is ailing, it is not a good idea to prune it, but
> a big healthy plant can recover vigorously.

Diana
When walking down our street a couple of years ago I saw a young woman
in her front garden fair laying into part of a lavender hedge. She had
cut down the first three or four plants virtually to leafless wood.  I
couldn't resist suggesting she might be better to handle the rest of the
hedge more lightly and she was happy to receive my advice.

However, it appears it was not actually necessary, as passing by the
garden a year or so later I happened to observe that hedge looking nice
and evenly hearty and well-developed along its entire length!

I am sure though your suggestion is valid that really drastic renewal/
training should not be attempted on other but vigorous plants. As to the
weak and ailing, in most cases they are probably better replaced with
new vigorous bushes anyway. I don't think lavenders were ever intended to be very long lived and one is far better to leave such oldies alone and attempt to root cuttings of their remaining healthy wood..

I have a beautiful "English" lavender (name unknown) which I got years
ago from a friend. It is very vigorous and has extremely handsome very
silvery foliage. It is also long-lived (for a lavender) and I suppose I
must have had the bush about twenty years. Anyway, last year it began
to look its age with many gnarled stems showing and much less new growth
than formerly (it was also getting overgrown by its nesxt-doro neighbour
a Protea), so I decided to renew its youth (wish I could do the same
with me <G>) and at the same time shift it more out into the open. It is
reasonably easy to propagate and I now have a nice new vigorous "baby"
in the sun and the old plant has been laid to rest.

Talking of places in the sun, with the passing years (nearly 50 of them) these have become increasingly rare in this garden, as often happens with old properties.

We started with just a piece of open farmland -one big grass paddock on a sun-facing hillside. However our valley runs more or less east-west and acts as a funnel for the prevailing (very strong) norwesters. This lead us as quickly as possible to try and get ourselves plenty of shelter towards the northwestern side of the garden and what with that and the houses to the west of us along the valley our place is by now much more a shade than a sun garden.

Fortunately, in the upper part of the garden is a north-facing terrace at the top of a sloping lawn topped by a quite tall wall supporting an upper flat lawn and this complex still gets practically all-day sun, so I can continue to indulge my liking for sun lovers, including lavenders, proteas and dianthus, which will no longer flourish anywhere else on the property.

Moira

--
Tony & Moira Ryan,
Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ.     Pictures of our garden at:-
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cherie1/Garden/TonyandMoira/index.htm
NEW PICTURES ADDED 4/Feb/2004

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