Weekend Win: Prune Lavender Now to Help it Survive Winter Chills

• TIME: 10 minutes
• RATING: Easy
• REWARD: Helps lavender survive winter

There’s an old gardening memory trick that says you should prune 8 inches from lavender plants on the eighth day of the eighth month. While there’s no need to stick exactly to this rule, there’s an awful lot of growing sense stored in those three digits. By August 8th, the flowers of most lavender varieties have faded, but the soil is still plenty warm enough to encourage new growth. And by trimming those old flower spikes, along with an inch or so of the foliage below, you’ll trigger the plant to grow a dense covering of new leaves. So if you're growing lavender in your garden, this is a quick and easy weekend win.

By following the 8-8-8 rule, there’s enough time for the fresh growth to harden before temperatures plummet, and this cloak of close-knit evergreen leaves will effectively insulate the plant through winter. And that means it’ll be in better shape next year, ready for another summer of abundant blooms..

The other benefit to trimming lavender in early August is keeping the plant compact and bushy, for a denser display of flowers next year. Pruning lavender plants now means you can shape them into a neat silver-leaved dome that will look good all through fall, winter and spring. A late summer trim makes it super-simple to avoid the biggest lavender pruning mistake of all, too: cutting into old wood, from which new stems probably won’t grow back.

Oh yes, and there’s an additional treat for you as well – but we’ll get to that!

How to Prune Lavender in August

1. Pick the Perfect Time

There's no need be exact about dates or measurements when you're deciding when to prune lavender. While the 888 lavender rule is a handy reminder, lavender should be trimmed once its flower spikes have faded and started to dry out, and the exact timing will differ between varieties and growing zones. But it's very likely to be right now.

2. Find Fresh Growth

Don’t stick to trimming off exactly 8 inches either. While that’s generally the right ballpark for most lavender types, you should aim to prune the faded flower stalk with around an inch of foliage. This is going to differ between a young and a mature plant, too, so use your judgement: you want to remove some of this year’s foliage but you don’t want to cut into the older, woodier stems below, which may not resprout.

Take a closer look at your plant and you'll probably spot a layer of fresh new silvery leaves against the greener foliage, above the brown woody stems. This is the perfect place to make your cuts as the stems here are lush, healthy, and ready to regrow.

3. Cut off Faded Flower Stalks

Use a sharp pair of bypass pruning shears, such as these Fiskars Bypass Pruners from Walmart, and if you haven’t sharpened your pruners in a while, do take a moment to before you begin. Clean cuts made with sharp blades heal much faster, so your plant can get on with the important business of growing fresh foliage, and it’s a two-minute task with a sharpening tool such as this $10 blade sharpener from Amazon.

Hold a bunch of stems in one hand and cut through the centre of this layer of fresh foliage with your pruners.

4. Shape the Plant

Once you’ve removed all the flower stalks, take a moment to consider the shape of your plant. If it’s a border plant, you may want to encourage it into a dome shape; if you’re growing a low lavender hedge, then you might want the sides to be straighter. I’m shaping this lavender plant to drape over the side of this raised bed so soften this patio corner, so I'm leaving the stems on one side slightly longer than those on the top.

Just be aware that if you cut into the woody part of the stems, they may not reshoot – but you can use that to your advantage, if you want the plant to ‘travel’ in a particular direction. The color difference between the older, brown woody stems at the plant base and the newer, green soft stems higher up is very clear at this time of the year, so it’s easy to tell.

5. Water to Aid Recovery

Pruning is a stressful event for any plant, so give your lavender a good water once you’re finished to help it recover quickly, and get growing again.

And that’s it, your weekend win is done! Thanks to its quick trim, your plant will now grow a snug coat of evergreen foliage that'll keep it cosy all through winter. And there’s a quick trick that will keep you happy in the cold season, too.

Before you make your pruning cuts, tie a ribbon tightly around a handful of stems, then trim as before.

You'll be left with a bunch of dried lavender to hang up indoors and scent your home. Deciding whether or not to strip the foliage from the stems will change the lavender's scent. The leaves typically have a slightly sharper, more resinous scent, adding depth and strength to the fragrance, which would be beneficial if you wanted to hang your posy in a bathroom, perhaps. In a bedroom, however, stripping the foliage so you enjoy just the sweeter fragrance of the flowers would give a softer, more calming aroma.

Either way, the scent will remind you of the plethora of fragranced flowers you can look forward to next summer – and boy will you get plenty, thanks to your timely August weekend win. If you want to give your plant some more TLC, then treating lavender to a gravel mulch is next on my to-do list.

Before and After

I always find it really useful to see a before and after of gardening jobs, so I know exactly what I'm aiming to achieve. Here's what my lavender plant looked like before its August prune:

Here's what my lavender plant looked like after its August prune.

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