When to Prune Lavender Plants

Many years ago, my husband Bill and I planted a huge (300+ plants) patch of lavender. We always used to trim them back at the end of the garden season. We learned an important lesson about when to prune lavender plants. I’m going to give you a very good reason to prune them in late winter or early spring!

A few winters ago, when we went outside for a walk and instantly noticed the delightful fragrance of lavender in the air. Even though the ground was covered with snow, it was very distinct. And, of course, lavender-blooming season was but a distant memory. We hadn’t yet gotten around to trimming back our lavender plants and decided to do it the following year.

It turns out birds LOVE lavender seeds! So there they were, in the middle of our snow-covered lavender patch, nibbling away at the seeds. And that in turn was releasing a wonderful fragrance. It seemed so odd to be smelling lavender in the dead of winter, but we instantly realized that our fall-pruning routine had been robbing the birds of another source of nutritious seeds.

From that moment on, we resolved to prune lavender plants at the end of the winter. After all, it was a win-win for everyone!

If you’ve new to pruning lavender, you can use either hedge shears or an electric or battery-powered hedge trimmer (we have the latter and it works great). All you have to do is trim back right above where you see new leaves sprouting.

The photo to the right shows a goldfinch working on the seeds in September, so you can see how popular they are.