How To (Hopefully) Propagate Lavender

* Apinun! I’m thawing my Winter bones in tropical Papua New Guinea at the moment, so here is a post I prepared for you whilst I’m in holiday mode. Now where is my mojito…

When we first drove along our road with Matt’s now-boss on our first interview way back in the swelter of South Australia’s January, I saw our old limestone farmhouse from a distance. Then, much to my delight, we turned in the driveway. Driving up to the house my immediate thoughts were… a) what a charming limestone house, the quintessential homestead! b) what’s with the pirate flag though? and c) it needs a hedge of lavender along the front of the house….

In the little teeny cottage we lived in whilst managing a property in north-east Victoria I planted ‘Avonview’ lavender – a very small ‘hedge’ of sorts which grew and grew and grew. It seemed to love the conditions, and we loved it back as we passed by it along the path to the back door. Lavender is a must for me in the gardens I grow – cottage French-Australian country style, hardy yet pretty. A lavender hedge along the front of our limestone farmhouse was forefront in my mind when we arrived. Then thoughts turned to not spending a fortune on other peoples houses like we have before. That old chestnut. So I have resisted buying lavender plants…and resisted…and then recently we were at another of the houses on the farm here, checking the rain gauge, as you do. The tenant had just moved out, and I spied a big, well-established lavender plant in the garden. Hmmm…

With some further research I discovered it is apparently easy to propagate lavender from another bush. Apparently. I’ve never propagated another plant from a cutting before, but my garden guru mum is mad for it. Her enormous, beautiful garden is chock full of plants of such-and-such she got as a cutting off so-and-so. So off I trotted to my local nursery in town, armed myself with some seed raising mix and hormone powder, and got cutting…

In my research they did say the plant cutting powder wasn’t overly necessary, but I figured it can’t hurt and might even help things along a little bit. The bush I took the cuttings from was starting to flower (and I’m sure had never been trimmed in it’s life) which is not ideal. I tried to take cuttings from the bottom of the plant, not too woody with some green growth on it. Dipping it in the hormone powder and then potting in some of the seed raising mix. Again, my research shows peat or compost would be ideal, so I’ve got all fingers and toes crossed this works.

Now…we wait. I’m hoping that soon enough I will have six healthy small lavender plants ready to plant along the front of the farmhouse, all for not very much money plus the bonus of having propagated them myself – like some sort of garden guru just like my mum! Here’s hoping the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree…or the lavender bush.