The Secret to Pruning Your Lavender Plants in Spring – DIY Garden Minute

The One Secret to Pruning Your Lavender Plants

Spring is a great time to prune and shape your English lavender plants, BUT there is an easy secret to prune them.

Are You Ready?

The secret is . .  to not prune down past the green growth of any lavender plant.

That’s it!

The Why Behind This

As English and most lavender plants age, they get this older wood closer to the interior of the plant where no green leaves or new growth occurs.

This can be thought of as a “dead zone”, where lavender plants don’t have the ability to grow from adventitious buds on older growth like some other plants do, like Artemesia for example.

This “dead zone” is also a characteristic of other plants like juniper, some heathers, and other plants.

Once you understand this characteristic of English, Spanish, and other lavender plants, you can then really strategize on where to make your pruning cuts so you then don’t lose a whole plant due to pruning in the wrong place.

The Plan

So, when pruning your lavender plants this spring, only make your pruning cuts in the “green zone” or actively growing areas of the plant.

You can prune away up to a 3rd of the green growth so as not to over stress any plant.

You can repeat this strategy over a few years of pruning your lavender plants to keep them more compact and shaped.

And that’s it! We hope this was helpful and happy spring pruning!

We have lots of different pruning videos that can help answer many of your questions. 

If you are looking for more pruning tips and know-how, check out our pruning YouTube video playlist by clicking here or start watching below!

If you are looking for flowering plant seed this spring or later this year, definitely check out our favorite online seed retailer, Eden Brothers at Eden Brothers.com, and make sure to use our coupon code: SPOKENGARDEN at checkout for 15% off your purchase.