Plant of the Month – March
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Spanish Lavender
- Lavandula stoechas
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Spanish Lavender offers a trio of qualities that gardeners seek: beautiful blossoms, drought tolerance, and fragrant foliage. Add to that rabbit resistance and tolerant of heat, cold, and poor soils, and you have a real winner!
- Plant Form: Evergreen perennial
- Water Use: Low
- Mature Size: 24 – 30 in. tall & wide
- Exposure: Full Sun
- Bloom Time: Spring (Feb-May), Summer (June – August)
- Native to: Mediterranean region and North Africa
- Hardiness: Cold hardy to 15°F
Spanish Lavender can fulfill your desire for a durable evergreen plant with bright flowers, enchanting fragrance, drought resistance, and heat tolerance. Both flowers and foliage are wonderfully fragrant. Purple bracts on flower heads appear like rabbit ears, and lend a whimsical look. Spanish Lavender is probably the same plant that the ancient Greeks and Romans used to scent their bath water, and is still popular today for dried aromatics and cut stems in homes. Prune lightly after flowering to stimulate next season’s growth. This water-wise, easy-care plant is perfect in both formal and casual Mediterranean-style gardens, as well as in cottage and wild gardens. It also performs superbly on dry slopes and rocky outcrops. Spanish Lavender attracts butterflies and pollinators, but luckily repels rabbits. Beautiful in large artistic pots, mixed borders, mass plantings, and rock gardens.
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