Lavender is a famous Mediterranean plant. Propagating lavender is possible through seed, cuttings, layering (ground and air). In some cases, division of the lavender clump is also an option.
Natural lavender varieties have succeeded in reproducing through seeds over millennia. However, due to cross-pollination, the children plants are never 100% identical to the mother plant.
Lavender seeds are tiny, between 1 and 2 millimeters long. Germination, even in ideal settings, isn’t guaranteed. Sometimes a seed will sprout within a week, sometimes it might need 3 months! Here, the picture shows commercial seeds. These have a protective coating on them that help retain moisture and make germination more certain. In the main lavender article, you can find a picture of lavender seeds without any coating.
Note that some lavender varieties are sterile. They either won’t make seeds, or seeds will appear but never germinate.
Seed, cuttings, layering, crown division and air-layering all work on lavender, but they differ in how long you wait and in what the mother plant must offer. Use this table to pick the method that matches your plant and your patience.
| Method | Best for | Timing | Key condition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seeds | Natural varieties, accepting some variation | Two years from sowing to the first flowers | Seed must be fertile, and germination is never guaranteed |
| Cuttings | Raising large quantities at once | Taken in summer, flowers the following year | Recent wood, 12-15cm long, still bearing leaves |
| Ground layering | Filling a gap along a line of lavender | One season, sometimes two, before separating | A branch that can be bent down to the soil |
| Crown division | Old bushes that have spread into several plants | Lift and transplant once several stems have rooted | Never a shrub with only one stem |
| Air-layering (marcotting) | Producing potted lavender | Roots in a few months, flowers the next season | Cut below the pouch, not above it |
Whichever route you take, only cuttings and layering guarantee a plant identical to the one you admired.
In summer, new branches can be snipped off from your favorite lavender shrub. Plants prepared from cuttings will already bear at least one or two flowers in the following year.
Lavender cuttings are prepared from recent wood. Ideally, growth that appeared since spring has started is best. There must still be leaves on the wood. If not, it’s too old.
Layering is the art of bending a branch down to the soil. There, it’s partly buried under soil, with a leafy portion of the branch sticking out on the other side. Roots form on the underground portion. After a season, sometimes two, the branch can be cut free from the mother plant.
With careful transplanting, it can be set up in a new growing spot. When you’re filling in a spot along a line, though, you can simply layer branches from two neighboring plants and leave them in place.
Larger lavender plants tend to layer spontaneously. In some cases, seeds might have self-sown and grown under the mother plant. You can divide the shrub in all these cases where your lavender bush has several live stems or trunks.
To separate the different plants that form a lavender that’s grown too large, follow these steps:
A variation of layering is to “bring the soil up instead of twisting the branch down”. This technique is called air-layering, but it also goes by the name marcotting or marcottage.
A small pouch with soil is wrapped around a portion of the lavender stem. This stem, young and still bearing green leaves, will grow roots in the pouch of soil. After a few months at most, rootlets colonize the handful of soil they were given. It’s ready to be cut off from the mother branch (under the pouch, not above it!).
This solution is perfect for potted lavender, since it creates a short seedling with a root clump that will bear flowers already in the next season.
It takes two years before the first flowers appear on lavender seedlings. Additionally, seed germination itself is slow and unpredictable, sometimes sprouting within a week or taking up to 3 months, making seed propagation a very slow overall process.
Yes, lavender cuttings taken in summer from recent growth (5-6 inches long with leaves still attached) are an effective propagation method. Plants prepared from cuttings will already bear at least one or two flowers in the following year, making this much faster than seed propagation.
Lavender can be propagated through four methods: seeds, cuttings, layering (ground and air), and crown division of the clump. Each method has different timelines and suitability depending on your goals and the lavender plant’s characteristics.
Lavender cuttings should be prepared in summer from recent wood that has grown since spring started. The wood must still have leaves on it; if there are no leaves, the wood is too old to use for cuttings.
No, some lavender varieties are sterile and either won’t produce seeds at all or will produce seeds that never germinate. Additionally, because of cross-pollination, lavender plants grown from seed are never 100% identical to the mother plant.
