Cutting back Lavender

I loathe lavender @Buzzy Bee , but that's just a personal preference. I think it's an easier plant if you can replicate the conditions it prefers - so a sunny site in a milder part of the country, with free draining soil all year round, where it grows more easily in the ground.
I like rosemary, but it doesn't like our weather here and has to be undercover in winter to prevent it being waterlogged and frozen, so it was always in pots. I used to grow it from seed every so often to counteract that too, and to have a back up. I think some of the prostrate ones are easier than the culinary/bigger types as long as they have the right site - ie grown in a wall or similar, to help with drainage.

 

Adding my thoughts about this topic: There used to be a rule that Lavender has to be cut back by mid August and latest mid September.
In my experience (Wiltshire, wind alley, plenty of rain, and clay soil) if I have cut the lavender in Autumn, then it died over winter. For the last 3 years, I take the flower stems off when they are gone, this has generated another new grow, much shorter than the first grow and I left that until Spring. I started cutting the green back in End March/April three years ago when the green started to grow again and always had success.
The only reason why I have to take out the remaining Hidcote plant in my garden is that the flower stems are ways to high because of the clay soil and fall over. I will replace it with a Salvia.

I mentioned that in the GW forum last year:
I went to Hidcote in April 2023 and saw that they had cut their lavender completely down. They wrote on a board that they normally replace the lavender every 3 to 4 years (a time frame I have heard in many gardening advice on telly, too). They were experimenting if they cut down to the woody part (where we shouldn't cut following the endless advice on telly), they wanted to find out of it regrows. And it did. When I came in June to Hidcote, the lavender looked like new plants.

That was the Lavender on the 9th of April



This was the Lavender on the 6th of June. I really checked if they had cheated, but no, it was the old Lavender what had regrown.



I haven't managed to go to Hidcote this year, but will do next year to see what has happened to the plants in the second year.

 

It still depends on location and climate though @simone_in_wiltshire . If you cut lavender back like that here in April, it would just die.

 

Maybe Hidcote is far enough south for that to work, especially when we have mild winters like last yr.

 

It always depends on the area where we live, but being here in the south, I would always cut the lavender after winter to protect the wood.