I have some upright rosemary that should be finished rooting in a couple of weeks. I would love to trade for one of your flowering quince. Please email me if you are interested. Thanks, Ibartoo

Hey Kiddy - Is the lavender still with leaves? If so, I'd say it'll come back. If space is limited then basically anything w/ holes can be a pot, so get fresh soil, put some holes in the bottom and layer it with coffee filters or something that will let water through. It should (1) be bigger (wider and deeper) than your current cup and (2) ideally something you intend to keep it in for a year or more (especially given your affinity, or lack thereof, for repotting, obviously, haha). So if you're talking about a Dannon yogurt cup size, then consider a large sour cream tub, or even one of Cool Whip -- you get the idea. 1. Fill the new tub w/ fresh potting soil. The filter should keep the soil in the cup without drifting out. 2. Move the soil to the sides of the new pot to create a hole in which to place your lavender. 3. Water the lavender enough to soften it, and then squeeze the yogurt cup all around to loosen it. Then turn it over and loosely guide the plant out of the cup. It should slide out with little effort; do not pull at the plant or stress it out. 4. I would guess that this thing is root bound -- meaning it will have roots all the way around the soil with little to no soil left. Take a knife and slice off the bottom 30-40% of the roots and then take your fingers and break apart the roots -- much like you would break apart braids in your hair after it's been braided all day. Do it gently but definitely break apart the roots leaving the top 20-30% of the root ball intact. (You don't want to damage the plant.) 5. Now that you have uncurled as much as you're going to, take scissors and give it a trim to just make it uniform without long roots dangling. Snip, snip, snip. 6. Place what you have left into the new hole of the new pot and ensure it fits nicely. If your makeshift hole in the soil is too deep, take it back out and let more soil drop into it and if it's too low, fill it up with more soil; the idea is that when you place your plant down in its trimmed state and fill in the remainder of your pot, you will have room to water without overflowing the soil and won't have to push down or tug up your plant to make flush with the soil. 7. Take extra potting soil and fill in the new pot to make your plant completely snug and LIGHTLY tap down the soil. You want to leave air and room to breathe in there, but do tap down a bit to remove big gaps. 8. OPTIONAL: Trim the top 20-25% of the stems and leaves with scissors. I always prune a bit when I repot, but some might say not to do so. 9. Water thoroughly ensuring that water drips out of the holes in the bottom of the tub. Let it completely drain in a sink or cup - and when it stops dripping, place back in the window. Wherever you have had it is best given that even with serious lack of attention, the thing is still there and alive! As far as your rosemary goes -- if you see green, then it's not completely dead. If you rooted it last summer and it's still green, I promise you it has rooted; I've found rosemary that will root, will do so under a month at most. :-) What is curious is that it hasn't grown at all, according to your description. Dead rosemary plants look -- quite dead, as you can see. (Not mine, but I've been there when one pot got lost behind many, many others.) I'd repeat the same exact steps as above and repot it into something a tad larger but do check the roots; I would doubt it is root bound given the lack of growth. In any case, put it in a new home with new soil and see how it fares. While you are raising this particular cutting indoors -- if it didn't die on you, one would think you'd have some growth on it. And however you have been watering it and caring for it apparently kept these plants alive all of this time, so I'd recommend keeping to that schedule! :-)

I don't know about growing rosemary from seed, but last spring I got 3 little rosemary plants about 8 inches tall and put them in some mostly sandy soil by my front door in full sun. They pick up water from the irrigation for the shrubs, but that sandy soil drains instantly. This year, 12 months later, they're about 4 feet tall. I've trimmed one side back drastically and it's bouncing back. By this time next year I'll have the prettiest smelling hedge in the world. Give your rosemary lots of sun, WELL-drained soil and regular moisture but no wet feet, and then stand back. I'll let the other folks here talk about lavender, because it's too hot and humid in my yard for it, although I'd love to be able to grow it. Good luck!

Had to laugh--I'm with Dawn. Picking my battles, and growing rosemary or lavender from seed isn't one of them. Having said that, thought I'd died and gone to heaven when I got my precious rosemary plant two years ago and watched it grow into a 3' x 3' shrub in just two summers. Since last winter was my first one here, I was so delighted that many plants, like the rosemary, parsley, daisies, thyme, sage, oregano sailed through winter with hardly a blip. And then we had this winter. It appears that the rosemary is a goner. Got down to about 15 a couple nights, and though I had lots of leaf mulch around the plants, it's not looking good for the rosemary. So I ordered 3 of the Arp variety just a few days ago, and plan to plant them in 3 different locations, in hopes that one of those locations will be a lovely little microclimate of a 7b or 8a. I can't winter them indoors because our house is very dark inside, and I don't want to fuss with any artificial lighting for one. (I do have a big grow cart, but a sizable rosemary wouldn't fit.)