Everyone knows the scent provided by lavender blooms as soon as we smell it. That highly floral fragrance is a real lavender trademark. but what do you do with your lavender plant once its scented blooms have started to fade?
What To Do With Lavender After Flowering?
Deadheading Lavender
As is the case with most flowers regular deadheading on lavender will encourage the plant to create more blooms, meaning you get to enjoy those flowers for a longer period of time.
This is the first job you should be doing as soon as the first flowers start to fade.
Deadheading lavender is really simple, just snip the old flowers off with secateurs or a sharp pair of scissors.
Pruning Lavender
Lavender should be pruned or cut back at two different times of the year, once in the summer after it has finished flowering and then again the following spring.
The summer trim is more of a haircut than anything, think of it as just extended deadheading rather than a full prune.
You don’t want to take too much off the plant here as it will need all of that foliage to survive the winter.
In the spring is where you can cut lavender back more aggressively. Typically lavender is not a plant that can be cut right back to the base and be expected to grow back so you need to be a little careful.
Most people advise you not to cut back into the woody part of the stem, but what do you do if you have inherited an overgrown lavender bush that desperately needs a big cut?
From my experience you cant cut back into the woody heart of the plant and it will come back reinvigorated. Just make sure there is always a bud on the stem below where you make your cut. This gives the plant somewhere fresh to grow from.
If you cut below the last bud then you are just killing that branch off, this isn’t always the worst thing on really overgrown bushes and sometimes they really need this tough love.