The Lavender Garden
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The Lavender Garden was begun in 2005. It is
15 ft. long and 14 ft. wide. In 2014 there were twenty-five individual plants
representing nine varieties of lavender. The varieties were
chosen for their eventual uses. Some varieties are better for potpourris,
others for bouquets and still others for their sweet flavor in food and drinks.
The varieties, number of plants and when they were planted ae as follows:
Twikel Purple - 2008 (1)
Grosso - 2011 (1), 2015 (1)
Provence - 2011 (1)
Buena Vista- 2019 (1), 2023 (1)
Munstead - 2005 (1), 2013 (2), 2014 (2)
Hidcote - 2014 (2), 2016 (1)
Twickel Purple makes excellent small bouquets; Grosso, and Provence are used in potpourris; and Buena Vista, Munsted and Hidcote have a mild, sweet flavor. Here are some recipes that make use of sweet lavender.
The winters of 2012 and 2013 were devastating to many of the old plants, most of which were very woody and weak. This necessitated a major replanting. By 2015 many of the plants were replaced and doing well. More were replanted in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. By 2023 there were eighteen plants in the garden. By 2024 there were only 12 plants left.
Below is a schematic of where each of the lavender plants are located in the Lavender Garden and the year that they were planted:
Lavender Plot Layout
2024 Activities
By the end of May there were only 13 plants left. All of the plants had severe winter dieback damage and were cut back. Many of the plants are quite old (one is 16 yrs. old, one 13, three 11, four 10, one 9, two 8 and one 1 yr old) They will be watered regularly and fertilized to see if they do well during the rest of the year. I also created an acequia to water the remaining plants with the water from the rain barrel since they are down hill from each other. Wild flower seeds were planted among the lavender plants that were left in late June to see if the plot can look better in the future. I am not planning to plant more new lavender plants this year.
2023 Activities
I added four new Buena Vista plants to the lavender garden on June 8th. With the die off from the previous years the garden now has 18 plants. Without a summer monsoon everthing had to be hand watered. Only two of the new transplants lived until September. Only 14 plants left going into winter!
2021 Activities
The 2020 winter was extra hard on the lavender plants in the Lavender Garden. Only 14 survived and those looked very bad in the spring. One from the Flower Garden was transplanted to allow for paving making a total of 15 plants.
2020 Activities
Plants began coming back to life in early May. Many of the plants are quite old now and had a lot of die back, so had to be severly trimmed. Put in four new Buena Vista plants to fill in where others had died.
2019 Activities
Spread all of the lavender garden with Yum Yum Plant Food watering it in on March 25. This was a pretty good year for lavender. However, a couple of the new plants did now make it through the summer. The flower production was good and I stored both the culinary and fragrant buds for use during the year.
2018 Activities
Picked the first English lavender from two plants (Munstead) to dry on June, 14. Lavender looks pretty good, since I have been able to water it every couple of weeks in this dry spring. We have had no measurable rain since the beginning of the year!
2017 Activities
This year was a good year for lavender. They had enough water before they bloomed so that there were lots of flowers. I picked all that I could and dried the buds for future use.
2016 Activities
Began picking English culinary lavender on June 15 to dry. Buena Vista, Royal Velvet, Hidcote, and Munstead.