Lavender is supposed to be calming, so it’s ironic that I now have two lavender plants giving me fits.
I’ve never grown lavender before. For one, I’ve never liked the smell of lavender products (am I allowed to say that?), so I certainly didn’t think I’d like the scent coming directly from the plants any better.
Two, lavender is a borderline-hardy perennial for my growing zone, so it’s quite possibly an annual for me.
So why did I recently buy two lavender plants?
For many weeks last summer, no matter where I searched, it was very difficult to find any pollinators. It didn’t matter if I was in my backyard or local park, in a prairie or at a botanical garden—there were very few pollinators to be found. It was alarming.
Some local experts think the bumblebees were wiped out by the record rains we had for the first two months of the growing season. All that water may have drowned out their underground nests. But there were also way fewer wasps, butterflies, moths and fireflies last summer.
This season I want to grow more plants that are helpful for pollinators. I purchased several native plants which I’ll share more about at a later time. But I also impulse-purchased two lavender plants, because when I was researching pollinator-friendly plants, lavender kept appearing on the top 10 lists.
What I didn’t pay attention to until I got them home is that lavender:
- Prefers full sun (less sun leads to leggy growth and fewer flowers)
- Likes well-drained, non-fertile soil (overly-rich soil or fertilizing can kill the plants)
- Struggles in humid conditions and may develop powdery mildew
So now I don’t know where to plant the silly things!
I can offer well-drained soil because most of my beds are raised. But the soil is fertile, and we don’t have single spot on our little city lot where there is full sun.
And if lavender doesn’t like humidity, it better buckle up, because we get plenty of that each summer.
Thankfully one of the plants is almost ready to bloom, so I may get to enjoy some flowers before it decides that I have made a horrible mistake.