Help with lavender hedge pruning

[LazyMumOfTwo]

I’ve got a lavender hidcote hedge at the front of our house (planted in late February this year) and noticed today that a lot of the flowers have now lost that bright purple colour and are drying up.

I checked online and it seems that the general idea is to prune in August or September. There were still a couple of bees buzzing about today but I’m not sure whether I should be pruning them now?

I also noticed that the lavender in other front gardens only seem to be coming into bloom now whereas my hedge has been in bloom since end of May. It gets full sun and with the hot spell we’ve had, I wonder if that is why they’ve flowered earlier than others and are drying up now?

Leave it until there are no bees at all.

In theory I do mine in the autumn.

In practice I can't be arsed and end up doing it at the last minute. This year I did it in March Turns out the lavender hasn't read the books and doesn't mind.

Also you can ignore anything that says it doesn't grow back from old wood. In a few years time your hedge will have got bigger and bigger and you can just take a hedge trimmer to it and be pretty brutal.

Any pics of the hedge? Thinking of creating one. Any tips welcome too.

I agree, I chopped a lavender right back in the spring with the intention of removing it, didn't get round to it and it's come back really well, was just going to replace it as its old but I think I will just leave it now as it looks great

Autumn is best. Make sure you leave some green above the wood stems too 😁

Not the best photos I’m afraid. The close up is one I just took today with the faded flowers. There’s also a photo of when they were first planted and another of them in mid June when the flowers were bright purple.

Thank you all! I’ve decided to leave it for now and wait at least another month.

Excited about making little pouches of lavender clippings!

I don’t do ours until the autumn. We have a huge “Arabian nights” border running up each side of front path and it’s resplendent at the moment (I’m in Scotland so maybe things happen a bit later here). Anyway. I have to get the electric hedge trimmers out and cut each one back quite brutally in the autumn.

As yours are still little they just need a hair cut with some shears.

When you reach 10 years plus you are 'but how am I supposed not to cut into old wood' and just start hacking.

They turn out to be much more forgiving than I thought.