How to Prune English & French Lavender

Lavandula Angustifolia (english) and Lavandula X-Intermedia (french) produce buds/shoots for the coming year, at the base of the current years growth.  Look in the nodes of the bottom-most leaves, and you will see sage coloured shoots begin to appear starting in late summer. 

Many of these shoots will become next years flowers and foliage.  The basics of pruning is to cut back the foliage and stems to just above these shoots.  This does three important things:

1.  Removes this years dead stems from amongst your future flowers.  These species of lavender do not carry the bright green foliage from the current year into the next.  This years mature leaves will fall off over winter and the stems above the new shoots will die back.  So we may as well remove them.

2.  Pruning encourages branching.  Branching multiplies the number of stems (and flowers) the plant will produce – filling in the space created as the branches grow outward. In the second image above, you can see the stub of the stem cut back from the previous year, along with three new stems that formed off that branch.  Where there was one flower last year, there were three flowers this year!

Branches growing in contact with the ground should be removed.  Reach in under the plant and snip these off where they meet a main stem. This improves airflow under the plant.

3.  If you live in an area that gets snow, making your lavender plants as compact as possible in the autumn will stiffen the branches and make them more able to carry this weight – resulting in less breakage.  French lavender in particular has limited ability to “fill-in” damaged areas – so anything you do to prevent broken branches will help keep your plant looking full and lush.

Even with annual pruning, the branches of these lavenders lengthen 2-3 inches a year.  But you will slow the development of “leggyness”, hold the ideal dome shape for many years, and enjoy more flowers every summer.   Well worth it!

The best time to prune is early autumn - but in all cases well before the first frost.  This allows the plants to recover from the pruning, and focus their energy on the new shoots.