Do You Like Lavender?

I love it. It is a plant that I have been growing during most of my gardening career, starting with the first herb plants I tucked into my city lot garden. It was in that garden on Glen Echo Drive that I discovered how perfectly paired English lavender (Lavender vera) and dark purple petunias (Purple Sails, at that time) could be in a summer garden.

Dark purple petunias, not only for their velvety lush color, but because they have much more of the petunia fragrance that mixes intoxicatingly with lavender’s fresh scent. Petunias are part of the Solanaceae family of plants, which include Nicotiana, another very fragrant planting that can make a trio of scent for summer days.

But it is the Lavender that is the perennial anchor, giving freely of its flowers through a long , and sometimes repeating bloom. I liked it so well I made a hedge of it lining my front walkway. During our winters, it has sometimes suffered damage and need replacing, but learning to make new plants of cuttings offset that liability.

Make new lavender plants from cuttings.

In the newer sensibility of growing edible landscapes, our view of many herb garden plants could be transformed into seeing them for their landscape beauty and use more of them as such.

All About Lavender, A Page I moved here…

Here on the Garden Journal, and in my garden website, I  write on cultivating lavender and describing how to choose growing companions, plants, crafts and ideas … and art featuring lavender. It is just one more way to have fun learning about plants.

And don’t get me started about Pinterest! I’ve only skimmed the surface on that site, but it is so much fun to make pinboards. Oh dear, I’ve veered off topic….

If you are not yet acquainted with the Lavender, this might be the year for your introduction.

Check out the Lavender topics:

• Like Lavender?
• Lavender Hedge
• Grow Fragrant Lavender
• Pruning Lavender Videos
• Lavender Plant Profile
• Multiply lavender plants from cuttings.

Botanically

A botanical painting by a favorite Botanical artist, Elizabeth Blackwell:

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© 2012 written for Ilona’s Garden Journal. An excellent blog.