Landscaping with lavender
Imagine:
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Swathes of lavender in your garden releasing its heady scent and creating an evocative, memorable ambience on summer days. Lavender creates a cool feeling on a hot summer day, a feeling of serenity. The quiet colors of gray-green and lavender……
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Lavender and roses together, offering a delightful combinations of scent and color. A low-growing lavender provides a decorative ground cover for the more leggy rose.
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A mass of beautiful lavender flowers creating a colorful area of the garden that might otherwise have been a touch scrubby.
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The pungent aroma of lavender attracting gently humming bees and butterflies and also repelling less welcome guests such as some slugs, flies and millipedes.
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Rows of indigo lavender bushes making a spectacular border for an herb garden.
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Hedges of lavender releasing their sweet fragrance as visitors make their way down a pathway.
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Lavender tumbling over a low wall and creating a spectacular boundary to the front garden.
Create mixed informal hedges with clusterings of various shades of lavenders - purples, blues, lavenders, white, pinks.
Create a low dry wall as a boundary for an herb bed. Use stone laid in an informal course to form 2 low walls leaning slightly toward each other. The space in between should be 25-30 cm (?? In.). Into this space plant a hedging of lavender. Mix in hyssop, rue, silver curry or the silvery coral of lavender cotton.
In hot dry climates, create a Mediterranean garden. Plant light shade trees with big pots of lavender underneath.
For slopes, use terracing and add water in the form of a small pond, a small fountain, or just a large container in which to float flowers. Fill the terraces with fragrant Mediterranean plants such as lavender, rosemary, germander, curry, sage, marjoram, oregano, the thymes.
French lavenders look particularly good in large terracotta pots on paved areas.
French and Allardii lavenders - tall strong bushes - are perfect ends to low hedging.
Dwarf forms of English lavender combined with low growing (dwarf) rosemary.
In a large tub plant Munstead together with a prostrate rosemary and scented
geraniums.
Smaller-growing, mound-forming English lavenders make great edging plants or can be massed to create a large silvery bank topped with hundreds of short lavender spikes. Include Nana Alba (white), Melissa (pink), Maillette (lavender-blue), Martha Roderick (lavender-blue), Baby Blue (dark purple).
Pinecone shaped flowers and silver foliage of Spanish lavenders (stoechas) make great specimen plants. Medium high growers. Silver foliage blends well yet provides contrast with reddish-purple flowers of anise hyssops.
While all lavenders are good landscaping plants, following are some suggestions of cultivars good for particular landscaping uses.
| Tall hedges | Low hedges |
|---|---|
| Seal (L. x intermedia) Old English (L. x intermedia) Bosisto (L. angustifolia) Hidcote / Hidcote Pink (L. angustifolia) Melissa (L. angustifolia) Miss Katherine (L. angustifolia) Fred Boutin (L. x intermedia) Grey Hedge (L. x intermedia) Grosso (L. x intermedia) Avonview (L. stoechas) Helmsdale (L. stoechas) Major (L. stoechas) |
Munstead (L. angustifolia) Hidcote (L. angustifolia) Hidcote Pink (L. angustifolia) Ashdown Forest (L. angustifolia) Delicata (L. angustifolia) Nana Alba (L. angustifolia) Twickel Purple (L. angustifolia) Bowles Early (L. angustifolia) Irene Doyle (L. angustifolia) Evelyn Cadzow (L. stoechas) |
| Feature plant | Containers |
| Fring (L. angustifolia) Royal Velvet (L. angustifolia) Hidcote Giant (L. x intermedia) Atlas (L. stoechas) James Compton (L. stoechas) Henri Dunont (L. stoechas) Pippa White (L. stoechas) Pukehou (L. stoechas) Willowbridge Wings (L. stoechas) |
Ashdown Forest (L. angustifolia) |
| Culinary lavender | Fragrance |
| Blue Mountain (L. angustifolia ) Sharon Roberts (L. angustifolia) Beechwood Blue (L. angustifolia) Blue Mountain (L. angustifolia) |
Avice Hill (L. angustifolia) Beechwood Blue (L. angustifolia) Blue Mountain (L. angustifolia) Bosisto (L. angustifolia) Buena Vista (L. angustifolia) Loddon Pink (L. angustifolia) Maillette (L. angustifolia) Martha Roderick (L. angustifolia) Nana Alba (L. angustifolia) Okamurasaki (L. angustifolia) Rosea (L. angustifolia) Royal Velvet (L. angustifolia) Sachet (L. angustifolia) Sarah (L. angustifolia) Sharon Roberts (L. angustifolia) Tucker’s Early Purple (L. angustifolia) Twickel Purple (L. angustifolia) Grappenhall (L. x intermedia) Grosso (L. x intermedia) Impress Purple (L. x intermedia) Margaret (L. x intermedia) |