Lavender is an absolute classic in the garden. However, it does not always want to bloom as lush and magnificent as gardeners would like. This is often due to poor pruning or no pruning at all, since you can make many mistakes when pruning. Indeed, pruning lavender should prevent the plant from becoming too woody in the lower part and form only a few long shoots with few leaves and flowers.
Regular pruning keeps lavender in shape and promotes plant health. According to the gardening pros at Ashridge Trees, the first pruning needs to be done in March. They said: "This tidies up your plants for summer, removing tatty winter growth, and encourages lots of flowers."
Plant expert Sarah Raven also said pruning lavender will "improve flowering" and pointed out that it prevents the plant from becoming "woody".
Ashridge Trees warned that leaving pruning until later will "delay flowering, reducing the total amount of flowers over the season".
March is the ideal time to "lightly trim" your lavender plants. You'll need to leave the "hard prune" for after lavender has done flowering - sometime in August.
While it may be tempting to really butcher your woody lavender, gardeners should ensure they don't cut too deeply into the old wood. Cutting the plant back to old wood, which lacks leaves, could eventually kill it, especially if it doesn't produce new leaves.
The older your lavender plant is, the more wood it will have. If it's been pruned well in the past, it will also likely have less wood.
How to prune lavender in March
Firstly, pick a stem and have a look at it. Each stem should have a woody base and then a leafy section above it.
Next, using a clean, sharp pair of secateurs or shears, cut the stem around two to three inches above the woody base in the leafy part of the stem.
This can be done with handfuls of stems at a time. The main rule to remember here is not to cut into the woody part of the stems. When trimming, try to create a rounded shape by pruning the outer stems shorter than the ones in the middle.
If there are dead or frost-damaged or diseased branches, remove them.
