9 Ways to Use Lavender in Your Garden Design
Give your yard a hit of color, a waft of fragrance and the buzz of bees with this sun-loving, low-water perennial
There’s a lot to love about lavender: its beautiful blooms, soothing fragrance and ability to act as a bee and butterfly magnet wherever it’s grown. Planted along a walkway, in a mixed-perennial bed, as a ground cover or even as a boxwood alternative, this Mediterranean favorite also proves to be very versatile in garden design. Take a look at these nine ways to use lavender in a sunny, well-drained part of your garden or in a container on the patio.
Getting started: How to grow lavender
Getting started: How to grow lavender
2. Highlight an entrance. Planted symmetrically on either side of a front walkway, the brilliant blue-violet blooms of lavender provide a cheerful welcome to this New England home. In a smaller garden with less of a front yard, you could create a similar effect by placing pots filled with lavender on either side of the front door.
Find a landscape designer to help with your plant selection
Find a landscape designer to help with your plant selection
The designer of this New England garden flanked both sides of a garden gate with mounds of ‘Hidcote Blue’ English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia ‘Hidcote Blue’).
3. Pot up as a patio accent. Grow lavender in a pot in a sunny area of a porch or deck near other container-grown vegetables or herbs. The flowers will attract bees and other insects to help pollinate backyard fruits and veggies. Start with a good-size container (at least 12 to 18 inches deep) with a drainage hole in the bottom, and fill it with fast-draining potting soil before planting.
Putting potted lavender directly in a garden bed can also be a great solution if you’d like to grow it in a part of the garden with poor drainage. The lavender plant will be much happier in the quick-draining soil, and its container can act as a focal point for the bed.
Putting potted lavender directly in a garden bed can also be a great solution if you’d like to grow it in a part of the garden with poor drainage. The lavender plant will be much happier in the quick-draining soil, and its container can act as a focal point for the bed.
4. Plant masses under airy trees. For a beautiful, meadow-like planting, treat lavender as a ground cover and plant en masse under and around trees. The trick to using lavender as an underplanting is that it needs full sun to thrive. Choose a tree like an olive (like the one pictured) and keep it pruned to allow plenty of light to pass through the branches, or start with a tree like a blue palo verde (Parkinsonia florida) that doesn’t have a dense, leafy canopy.
5. Plant a variegated form for foliage diversity. There are a few relatively new lavender hybrids, including ‘Goldberg’, ‘Meerlo’ and ‘Walvera’, with cream-colored variegated foliage and purple flowers. If you see them at a garden center this summer, pick up one or two to try. The pale foliage looks gorgeous contrasted with dark green rosemary, boxwood and purple-leafed basil or potted up in a dark-colored container set into a bed. Grow as you would regular lavender: in a spot with full sun and excellent drainage.
6. Plant in groupings to show off flower color. Lavender makes the biggest impact when planted in masses through the garden. For formal landscapes, try arranging lavender in planting bands or blocks with groups of six, eight, 10 or more plants in a single area. In more naturalistic-style gardens, bank lavender in swaths, laying out the plants to twist and turn through the garden like a lavender river bed.
7. Use as a boxwood substitute. Clipped in neat and tidy mounds, these English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) plants could almost be mistaken as evergreen shrubs. If you commit to cutting it back, lavender can be used in the same ways as boxwood – planted as a low, formal hedge, as a sculptural mound or as part of a knot garden.
Lavender thrives in areas with fast-drying soils and generally requires less water than boxwood. If you let it bloom, there is also the added benefit of supporting bees and butterflies — something most evergreens shrubs don’t offer. To keep the lavender forms as tight balls, clip them back hard after summer flowering.
Lavender thrives in areas with fast-drying soils and generally requires less water than boxwood. If you let it bloom, there is also the added benefit of supporting bees and butterflies — something most evergreens shrubs don’t offer. To keep the lavender forms as tight balls, clip them back hard after summer flowering.
8. Establish a theme through repetition. Use lavender’s eye-catching flower color to your advantage by planting in clumps that draw the eye through a garden. For example, the designer of this English garden used groupings of multiple lavender plants to edge garden beds, marching them down the length of a backyard. The chunks of purple-blue help tie the different areas of the garden together through repetition, and their position down the center of the lot establishes perspective.
9. Try a geometric pattern. Planting on a grid establishes a formal, geometric theme to this garden in Berkeley, California. Rather than using a typical boxwood or barberry to create this grid, the landscape architects behind the project used a combination of Spanish lavender (Lavandula stoechas), two types of lavender cotton (Santolina chamaecyparissus) and spring-flowering purple allium. The result is a fresh, modern meadow of mounding perennials — with the bonus of being low-water and pollinator-friendly.
Houzz readers: Tell us, do you love lavender? Show us how you’ve planted it in your garden in the Comments.
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Learn more about growing lavender
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Learn more about growing lavender
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To edge a path or patio with lavender, set young lavender plants about 1 foot away from pathway edges. Plants will quickly fill into mounds in a single season. Lavender plants positioned in bed corners can also help cover up awkward angles or a spot where two different hardscape materials meet.