French lavender is a nice alternative to common lavender thanks to its very original flowers.
Key facts for French Lavender
Name – Lavandula stoechas (GB)
Name – Lavandula dentata (USA)
Family – Lamiaceae
Type – herb sub-shrub
Height – 24 to 40 inches (60 to 100 cm)
Exposure – full sun
Soil – ordinary, well drained
Foliage – evergreen
Flowering – June to August
French lavender is a name given to two different but very similar plants of the same family. Both are easy-going and very productive, and care for both is virtually identical. French lavender will decorate your gardens and terraces magnificently for a long time!
In the United Kingdom, you’re dealing with Lavandula stoechas (often called Spanish lavender in other places).
In the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the species called French lavender is Lavandula dentata… which the French themselves call English lavender!
Planting French lavender
French lavender appreciates well-draining, light and even poor soils.
It can grow more or less anywhere, but is vulnerable when temperatures drop below 19°F (-7°C) in winter.
- We recommend planting it in fall, but you can plant in spring without any problems.
- Water a bit at the beginning and then keep from watering as much as possible.
- No need to add fertilizer.
- French lavender grows well in chalky soil, but won’t be happy in acidic soil.
Prepare a place that is well endowed with sunlight with well drained soil. If your soil is clay, mix sand into it to make it lighter.
- Refer to our guidelines for planting shrubs.
- To grow a French lavender hedge, plant one stem every 12 to 16 inches (30 to 40 cm).
Planting French lavender in pots
One important tip to grow French lavender in pots: avoid soil moisture at all costs.
- Double-check that the pot has a hole.
- Add a drainage layer made with small gravel or clay pebbles.
Watering French lavender
Lavender excels at resisting drought. There are only three cases when you must water your flowers:
- just upon planting, once, thoroughly
- during extremely hot heat waves (over 95°F or 35°C)
- if your French lavender is growing in a pot or flowerbed that is covered and never gets any rain.
Expert perfume makers say that the dryer the season, the more fragrant the perfume!
Pruning and caring for French lavender
Pruning French lavender is possible, but must be exclusively performed on growth that still bears leaves. If you prune dry wood, it won’t grow back…
- At the end of winter, prune as you wish, but follow the rounded shape of the plant.
Avoid cutting off old growth, because those branches rarely send out new shoots.
Favor pruning only on young, tender shoots rather than old, hard wood. - If your climate zone has mild winters, you can also trim your lavender bush in fall.
- After the blooming, snip off floral scapes to avoid needlessly draining plant nutrients.
Cut lavender flowers are an excellent way to perfume clothes and laundry.
If your French lavender has grown bare spots, you’ve two options to help make your lavender full again.
- Layer the lavender to produce new, healthy bushes that are immediately vigorous (L. dentata particularly does well for this, but L. stoechas does great, too)
- Hard prune your lavender over a few years. French lavender can be hard pruned, but not all at once.
Here is our video advice to prune lavender correctly
French lavender in winter
French lavender is vulnerable to harsh freezing, 19°F (-7°C), and can’t survive in sustained cold spells.
- Protect the base with mulch in winter. Use mineral mulch if possible.
- Drainage must be perfect.
Preserving French lavender, dried
French lavender flowers and branches can keep for months, even years, if kept in a dry place sheltered from the sun’s rays.
- Best is to hang floral panicles together in small bunches to dry them before keeping them.
- Traditionally, locals used to prepare small cotton pouches filled with lavender flowers to perfume laundry in the closet.
- A variant that doesn’t require cloth or sewing is the lavender ribbon wand.
Diseases and pests that attack French lavender
There aren’t many. Actually, this flower often helps as a pest repellent. Like marigolds, it repels aphids.
In cases where the plant is severely weakened due to extreme drought or overwatering, the shrub may develop diseases such as leaf spot due to Septoria.
Although butterflies love to drink its nectar, you won’t find any caterpillars on the leaves, none like to eat it!
All there is to know about French lavender
French lavender got its name from the country where it was developed and grown intensively for perfume. In France, a common name for it is “butterfly lavender” because the tips of the flowers look like butterflies.
Their flowers are stouter that those of common lavender, and like its cousin, both types of French lavender have been grown for thousands of years. Traditional uses were for bathing, its scent, and medicinal properties.
A very cute plant, this sub-shrub is one of the symbols of Provence, of the Mediterranean sun and typical fragrance.
Used in olden days to perfume bath water and clothes, lavender today serves to beautify our rock beds, flower beds and gardens.
Today, French lavender is used when elaborating perfume and essential oils.
Easy to care for, this particular lavender only requires watering in case of strong heat waves.
- Plant them near your rose trees, since they act as aphid repellents.
Note: in some regions of Australia and Spain, French lavender is considered an invasive weed and should not be planted.
Read also:
- Proper lavender name for each species & how to tell English, French & Spanish lavender apart
- Health benefits of lavender
- Lavender care
Smart tip about French lavender
A great purveyor of nectar, French lavender attracts honeybees to the garden, where they join in on the fauna and flora ecosystem.
French lavender on social media
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Credits for images shared to Nature & Garden (all edits by Gaspard Lorthiois):
Field of French lavender (also on social media) (also on social media) by Myriam under Pixabay license
French Lavender close up by Daniel Wanke under Pixabay license
French lavender bloom (also on social media) by Katja Schulz under © CC BY 2.0
Toothed leaves (also on social media) by Francisco under Pixabay license
French lavender with large frills (also on social media) by Rosalyn & Gaspard Lorthiois, own work
Can you tell me how to protect French lavender in winter ours has died possibly through the frost where it is in a normal flower bed THANK YOU.
Hello Mrs West, sure. If it gets really cold every year, a good solution would be to try planting it using the pot-in-the-ground system, so that you can take it out before winter and store it in a garage or place that won’t freeze.
If you prefer to leave it in place, try to winterize it (article on winterizing here) with horticultural fleece or a clear plastic bag loosely wrapped around the bunch. You can also heap a pile of straw atop the shrub. Usually that keeps the harshest frost at bay. Come Spring, pull the hay away to free your French lavender.
Lastly, you should know French lavender is the least hardy species. If it fails you repeatedly, try planting English lavender or Spike lavender, they’re both hardier than French Lavender.
I recieved a French lavender tree for mothers day. It was doing great, flowering and looked healthy for a couple months. Now its turning brown and yellow and no more flowers. Its in the 80s and I only water when its dry… How am I killing my beautiful lavender? 🙁
Hello Christina, brown is usually lack of water but yellow is often a sign of overwatering… If the plant is in a pot and the pot itself in a pot holder, it’s really important to make sure that when you water, the pot doesn’t wallow in water inside the pot holder. If you’re careful to let it drain out fully before putting the pot back in the pot holder, then it probably isn’t a problem of overwatering.
So it might be drying out for lack of water perhaps. Try watering it a bit more often, still smaller amounts. This is especially true for potted plants, they tend to dry out faster.
It might be that the soil is too acidic. This happens if you use bark mulch or if there isn’t much lime in the soil. Compost will raise pH from acid towards neutral. Wood ash will even bring it into slightly alkaline range, which is good for lavender.
To a point, it’s normal for the plant to stop blooming. After all, usually the blooming season for French Lavender is around two-three weeks, after that the flower panicles dry out over the next two months.
My french lavender is doing wonderful where I planted it. It has so many flowers n I wanted to use them so I cut them off. I work w herbs n dry them all the time when I when I tried to dry them they got sticky. That doesn’t happen w my mother
Lavender. Do u know why it does that? Thank u
Hi Charlene, that’s surprising. Do you think a disease or an insect was on them? Normally French lavender dries just like the other ones. It’s still spring so maybe they were really full of sap, possibly it rained before picking them? In this season you’d have to dry them by tying smaller clumps together not more than 10 or 15 to a cluster.
😉 LAVENDER
How do I know how much to water my plant?
French lavender can take drought but not overwatering. Water only when the dirt around the plant is dry deep down, like a finger’s depth deep. If the ground drains well, water thoroughly. But if the soil retains water well (if you have mulch, for example), then only water a little, like a glassful of water, and wait until dry again.