Lavender bushes smashed down from heavy snow

[Nancy T 1]

My Lavender bushes are all leaning and the branches are kind of smashed and growing sideways from all the snow being piled up on them all winter. It doesn't look like they will straighten up on their own.  Should I trim them? and if so, when?

[Steven Nikkila 32]

Go ahead and cut it back. We usually give lavender a haircut or even cut back hard every spring. Just don't remove all of the existing foliage and buds.

[Digging in the Dirt 3]

Hi Nancy,

 

A few years ago I planted a lavender plant in the front of my flower garden.  The only way it could stay in the front was to give it a hard haircut every year.  At first I was a little nervous to give it a hard haircut, but I remembered reading once that Janet said if you cut a shrub down because it's to big, and it dies, you haven't lost anything but a plant that couldn't live by your rules.

 

Since my wife wanted the lavender in the front of the flower garden, a hard haircut was my only choice.  This is now the third year I have given our lavender a hard haircut, and it's growing back just fine from the bottom of the plant.  Even with the hard haircut, we still get lots of flowers and to be honest, by early June, you won't even be able to tell I gave the plant a haircut.

 

Maybe my plant has an extraordinary will to want to live, and not all lavender plants are as tough as mine, but I assume that they are so I think you should be safe giving your lavender a haircut.

 

 

     

[seroubal@hotmail.com 0]

I live in the U.P. and my lavender has actually been cracked from the weight of the snow, right down to the main trunk.  The diameter of the main trunk is about 1 inch.  How should I proceed?  It has happened in the past and has killed off some of the branches, so they are starting to look like bonsai projects...  Any advice?  Re-prune, dig out.  Advice on cultivars hardy to UP zone 4?  Area is well drained, south/west facing.  Thanks for your thoughts!  Sue in UP

[Janet Macunovich 32]

Not much to be done but to cut it back to below the crack and hope the plant is vigorous enough to sprout from the trunk. Frequent cut-backs keep lavender most vigorous when grown hereabouts. It's a dry-summer Mediterranean species; growing conditions in the Great Lakes are too humid so the stems don't remain healthy for many years. When a Michigan gardener tells me they have inch-diameter stems I fear the plants have rarely been cut back and so do not have the plethora of smaller-diameter young stems that work better here.

 

If it doesn't grow back from buds below the cut, buy new -- lavender grows quickly where drainage is great and there are 6+ hours of sun a day -- and do cut it back once a year, either in early spring or right after bloom (or both).

 

If this lavender is really special to you (started as a cutting from your Great Aunt Mel, or it's a variety with specially long flower stems found at an herb farm, etc.) then you might try this: Don't cut it way back yet. Watch it in spring, see if any of the branches sprout. "Layer" any branch that does grow -- that means to lay that stem horizontally on the ground or across the top of a container full of moist soil, having lightly scraped the wood that will be in contact with the soil. Peg it down so it stays in good contact with the moist earth, and it'll root. Then use THAT stem as the center of your new plant.