Need a truly fragrant lavender now - help

[amoreoamicizia]

I've posted before about planting some flowers for someone as a "thank you". Unfortunately, it's not gone completely to plan as some of the paler flowers have finished flowering so the ones I added now look a bit garish.

I'm thinking a lavender in bloom might soften the look a bit but when I went to a couple of garden centres, the lavenders available hardly had any scent. I now regret not picking up a multi pack of lavender when I was in Sainsbury's (of all places) recently that did smell wonderful. ☹️

Does anyone know where I can get a lavender with an excellent scent at this time of year? Any recommendations on variety? Google says lavandula varieties have the strongest scent. 🤔

Thanks.

Lavandula is simply the name of the genus comprising all the lavenders

googling suggests Lavandula x intermedia and some varieties of Lavandula angustifolia. You can buy online, but not flowering plants. Have you a herb nursery nearby?

White lavender artic snow has a lovely fragrance.

Some of the most fragrant lavenders are the French ones but from experience they are not hardy enough to survive winters planted out in the UK. If you have a lavender farm near you, they usually have nurseries attached where you could pick up a hardy variety and smell them at the same time. There's one near kings lynn and one in Hitchin. Must be some more if you google it

There's one in Yorkshire too, near Castle Howard.

Thanks everyone. By pure chance I picked up a lavender with a gorgeous scent today at the garden centre. Google doesn't have rave reviews for the variety but I trust my nose in this case 🙂 I've noticed while searching that lavender seems to vary from plant to plant, the garden centre had another identical plant that was hardly fragrant at all.

Now you’ve bought it, it’s actually time to prune it!
Prune on or near Aug 12th each year, remove the flower spikes and a LITTLE of the greenery. Will be fab next year.

Gosh, I had no idea it had to be pruned so early. It won't work for my softening effect, then. Still a good buy, though. An outstanding scent for unknown reasons (in this one specific plant). Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket while I'm on a run of good luck 😀

Yes, years ago I dreamt of replacing my lawn with rows of the French lavender you mention. I think I thought it would be a mini-Provence scene in my garden 😁 I've always had a vivid imagination. I think in the end the task of digging up the grass, travelling and obtaining that specific type from a lavender grower became overwhelming and I ran out of steam 😅

You don't have to prune them so early. Gardener's question time once did a test where they pruned one third of a row of lavender early, one in autumn and the other was left until after the winter.

The following year they all looked exactly the same, so they concluded that it was better to leave it until after the winter.

The reason it is traditionally cut now is for the harvest, for making perfume. If you're not doing that there is no need.

I don't usually prune mine until late spring, so as to give any bees over the winter somewhere to feed, and I have seen them on the flowers.

The same.

Don’t worry. I always leave mine unpruned over winter so the goldfinches can have the seeds. It works fine. Still has enough time to produce new flowers. I may not prune heavily enough, which means over several years they get to being big plants, but they’ve flowered well for the last 20 or 25 years.

Thanks, that’s interesting!

And another bit of evidence for my theory that most established gardening advice originates from commercial growing or from big country house gardens, where yield has to be maximised, there’s a full time gardener, and ample space.

That's an interesting theory, @MereDintofPandiculation. What would be another example of that?

@amoreoamicizia When you take cuttings, you remove most of the leaves, and half of the top two. On another gardening forum a poster said “why not just move one completely and leave the other? And a nursery owner said “because if you’re doing hundreds of cuttings it’s quicker to snip two together than neatly take off 1”

Yes, I think often advice relates to things that make sense in a certain climate and in certain circumstances, but doesn't necessarily translate as an absolute.

I am a very absent-minded gardener with a garden that is much too big for me, and who will do things when I get round to them rather than when I 'should'. It sometimes means the things are a bit harder to do, sometimes that plants look a little rough for a bit, but in general they cope well with my incompetence.

Nature is quite resilient, it's always worth giving what you want to do a go, chances are it'll be OK.

Which variety was it? I need some new lavender plants too!

Bump

Oh I'm sorry, I wrote a reply but mustn't have posted. It's planted now and I don't have the pot but it's something like "blue spire spear", a compact variety. As I say, the other one they had of the same variety wasn't fragrant. Apparently intermedia varieties are the most fragrant, as mentioned above.

Thanks 👍