Why is my lavender browning?

[greenfingerediamnot]

I'm back! This time with my lavender- it was moved from a rectangular planter to a deep square one. At that point, I thought I'd killed it and it would go into shock because I'd read I should've waited until the autumn to move it instead. It's been fine until about a week ago when I've noticed the lavender flowers browning- does anyone know what this means? The actual foliage is still green, just the purple flowers are browning. Should I cut it right back? (I was waiting to do this in September).

Forgot the photos. The flowers still smell lovely.

Is it French Lavender? It doesn’t like being damp

Is that not just the flowers starting to go over? I'd do some deadheading anyway.

That’s the flowers starting to go over.

What does 'flowers going over' mean? 🙈

When the petals die off and it starts to go to seed. No flower lasts forever! I'm not sure if this applies to lavender, but some plants will flower more if you take off the fading heads before the plant puts energy into making seeds.

Thank you @ErrolTheDragon. I’ll get onto deadheading the plant tomorrow but Is it bad if the plant starts to make seeds?

My lavender has done the same. When u say to dead head, do you mean just cut off all the heads and leave the stalks or cut each strand back to where it meets the plant?

I don't think it applies to lavender. There are some tiny flower spikes further down the stem which may enlarge a bit, but no dormant flower buds stimulated into growth by removal of the main flower head. Their flowers are relatively long lasting, 3-4 weeks. A lot of the flowers which can be stimulated into further flowering, eg sweet peas, have flowers that last only a few days.

Yes it's going over, mine is doing the same, perfectly normal! In a few weeks I will chop the flowers off

Mine began flowering early May so I’d expect the flowers to start browning soon. Sad time.

Bees and butterflies will keep coming for a long time yet and it will still smell lovely for a long time. I'm not sure if it's the right thing to do, but I cut mine back once it goes to seed.

Lavender needs trimming after the flowers have finished, which is when the bees and butterflies have lost interest in it. Cut off the flower stems and about an inch of the leafy stems. You can cut a bit more if you need to trim it to shape, but don't cut into the old woody growth - it's unlikely to shoot from there so you'll end up with a bald patch at best.

Lavender can be quite prescriptive as to when you prune and how much to take off. I have Hidecote and Munstead varieties (which I think yours is) and their growth pattern goes something like this (starting in Autumn):

Autumn - prune back stems and flowers, making sure you retain some silvery green foliage - if you cut away all the growth back to the hard wood, it could kill the plant.

Winter - the plant stays dormant, however in mild winters you may find it tries to lay down a small amount of silvery foliage.

Spring - growth is visible with the silvery toned foliage turning to vibrant green. Flower stems form with tiny purple ends.

Summer - stems continue to grow and strengthen and the flowers turn bright purple. If you cut these, you would not normally expect new flowers to replace them. I try to delay harvesting my lavender (for eye pillows, linen bags and to hang upside down in net bags in the wardrobes) as long as possible because the bees and other pollinators absolutely love the flower heads. I feel quite sad when I have to harvest them, it's normally in the chilly Sept evenings as the sun goes down, and the bees can get very annoyed at me!

Your lavender (left photo) looks like it's getting quite woody in the middle - if you carefully prune it this Autumn (as per my description above), by next Spring/Summer it will have a new lease of life. Right photo, I'd cut any of the brown flowers including stems, so the plant doesn't put all its strength into seeding and continues to flower for the rest of the summer,

I prune my lavender in the Spring because the goldfinches like the seed.

It's just finishing flowering, that's all. If you cut the flowers off with their long stems attached, you can put them in a vase without water, they dry and smell lovely for ages.

Thank you @daisychain01- that is very helpful advice. I'll try to action what you've said this weekend.

There are quite a few visible woody bits so I'm worried I'm going to make the entrance to the house look really unsightly but I'd rather that than a struggling plant.

Can I ask what a plant 'going to seed' means? Is it a bad thing?

This is what this lavender plant looked like last September when I inherited it from a neighbour I bought the planters from!

This is it almost a year later!

Maybe it's a big Harry Potter fan.

A plant going to seed is just a stage in its normal lifecycle so not a 'bad' thing. It's just that going to seed brings it to the end of that cycle during the growing season and by removing the seed heads you can prolong its season a bit more.

lavender has quite a unique growing habit similar to rosemary and thyme (all beautifully aromatic) it thrives in a hot, arid Mediterranean climate where its habit is to develop rough woody stems to preserve water.

In UK where our climate tends to be milder and wetter you have to be careful to keep your lavender in similar growing condition, for example an open, free -draining soil with a top dressing of horticultural grit. They grow well in pots as they aren't naturally invasive, they're quite slow-growing but they can get quite big, hence why annual pruning is important to keep woodiness at bay and stop them collapsing.

The basic purpose of the plant is to produce seeds to reproduce itself. So first the plant grows, producing leaves which use the light from the sun and nutrients collected by the roots from the ground to make the energy for everything else. Then they produce flowers which have either anthers producing pollen, or a stigma to collect pollen, or both. The flower species will be more robust if there’s lots of cross breeding, (just like it’s not good to have lots of inbreeding in humans), so the plant wants its stigmas to collect pollen from other plants. So it produces brightly coloured flowers to attract bees and other pollinators to carry the pollen from one plant to another. Once the stigma has collected its pollen, there’s no more need for the flower, so it dies, while the plant concentrates on producing its seed.

The fact that you are attracted to the flowers just as much as the bees is of supreme irrelevance to the plant

Lavender is a prolific self-seeders. I find a profusion of little babies scattered around the rockery this time of year, and save myself a fortune by bringing them on in the greenhouse and then refreshing any of the older woody plants with nice lush young ones. They weren't the least bit affected by the lack of rainfall.

Cut the flowers.off, you may get a second flowering. Lavender farms cut several times a year.