pruning lavender

Will it be OK to prune a lavender bush hard back to old wood now or will it make it vulnerable to early frosts - I live in SE London. If not advisable now, when should it be pruned as it has become untidy.

 

Trim to tidy up the dead flowers and any straggly bits now. Prune back in early Spring.

 

DON'T PRUNE IT BACK TO OLD WOOD!

As Sussexgardener says... just trim.

they have a limmited life, they will get too staggley and shapeless in the end, in which case they are best replaced. They strike easilly from cuttings!

 

Not the best advise in the world but pre-joining this site I hacked a completely overgrown stragly old lavender bush down right to the stump .... bearing it mind its probably about 20 years old.

I thought it looked so awful I didnt mind if I had killed it off .... but it grew back the following year, pretty much from where I cut it.

Probably not to be recommended though as they are not supposed to grow back from old wood ..... no idea why mine did !

 

In general, it will die if you cut it down to the old, hard wood. Then again, gardening is adventurous, you can always try.

If I were you, I'd wait until April, take cuttings, root them and replace the mum plant with the healthy cuttings in later spring.

 

I've never tried either of these tricks, but I've read of them.

One trick is to uproot the plant in autumn, then dig a deeper hole and put it back, so that leggy bits are now buried.

Another is to peg the leggy branches down (ie layering them) in which case they are apparently likely to root.

A third trick mentioned in my book, although this is probably more for larger scale propagation, is to mound it up with 50/50 mix of compost and sand, in which case apparently each branch will root in the loose mix, then you can gently brush it away and cut off the newly rooted bits for new plants. Apparently the success rate is higher than that of cuttings because it eliminates the race between rooting and rotting/starving.

Like I said though, I've not tried any of these techniques, they are just what I read in my book.