Lavender does not respond well to cutting back hard. Usually it is advised just to shear them back after flowering and only a little way into green growth. They are not happy if you go back into woody growth.

My lavender looks grey. What sort do you have?
You should cut l
english lavender (lavendula angustifolia) back every year as it will start to get very gnarly and woody (but will flower perfectly vigorously). Here in the UK. I aim to cut mine back as far as I can as soon as it has flowered, late July, early August without fail .....once the growth starts to get woody and leaves die off leaving bare trunk, it will not regrow from that point. Needless to say, I also have lots of lavender where I was less circumspect in cutting it back ....it will forever look a bit messy. never returning to its initial rounded form but still has a rustic charm of its own, especially in the rough and tumble of an allotment.

This post was edited by campanula on Wed, May 21, 14 at 16:35

Any chance for a pic?
Grey (in zone 5) could mean dead

If they grow there should appear new leaves. If you cut back only to the inner most sprouting bud, you should be fine

What I do is first wait for the plant to sprout new growth. Don't touch it before this happens. Then everything that doesn't have new growth can be cut off (dead). If there are one or two branches that are much longer than the others, cut it back to a more or less tidy mound.

Don't consider it a long lived plant. They get to the point where what has survived is too woody to leaf out well, and they just get ugly. Since new ones are cheap, it is easy to just replace them. Just make a note of what variety you had before the did reasonably well, and buy the same kind. There aren't a lot of lavender varieties that winter well.

Lavender does good in England, so I have heard. Its a bit tricky in parts of the US. I have had them croak slowly after trimming in summer so I wouldn't advise doing it here, I think early spring would be best but then again, they are so persnickery. I think the humidity & heat gets them in summer or in some parts of the country they will drown in winter. I have a blueish and a greyish. Types vary. The Spanish Lavender is very blue while the English is more grey. I'm trying the Spanish since I read they will hold up better in humidity but just bought another English Munstead today because I think the Spanish won't winter over but I did build a gravelly hill just for it to hedge my bet. Its all chance or luck with Lavenders around these parts. A couple years = success. Rarely do they live longer than 2 or 3, just when you think you have it licked, the plant up and dies.

They seem to do quite well in New Mexico or Colorado where its arid. Still, we insist on wasting our money. I have much better luck with rosemary, not quite the same thing but still it has "a look'.

If your plants still look dead, 99.9% of the time, they are. Trimming won't matter in that case & you should be seeing growth by now. You can replace them real cheap.

This post was edited by TexasRanger10 on Wed, May 21, 14 at 18:49

You mentioned that they don't Winter very will, will this past Winter we had allot of snow and temperatures were below 0 and with -20 at times.

Now what do you think are they dead?

probably.. i never got them to live very long in z5a MI

i gave up long ago ...

if there is no green within a month.. its dead .. there is small hope it might come from the roots ...

i think i recall its a winter moisture problem... either being to wet when they went to sleep .. or when they woke up ... i think i recall that my soil was too good.. for the drainage they preferred ...

the big problem i have noticed here in my MI ... is that it froze solid real fast last fall.. and i am suspecting that some things may not have fully hardened off properly ...

i am betting on dead.. but you can hold out hope if you wish ...

and do as i did ... move on to something else..

unless you want to grow them as annuals... dig them out in fall.. put a string around them.. and hang them upside down in the garage from the rafters ... until they completely dry ... and then enjoy them as dried flowers ...

pop us a pic if you wish

ken

They are so easy to find for sale, I'd just buy a new one.

I just bought a decent sized one in a 4" pot -- English Lavender for $1.20 at the Public Market. Beats that $7.99 gallon size all to heck, I can wait for it to grow. Annuals & such are now marked down from $1.99. Plants are starting to go on sale cuz its so damn hot & dry now. I picked up another slew of 4" pot lantanas for the same price. In another month, they will be giving them away to keep from watering them.

I just wish we'd get some rain & it would cool back down. It gets pretty dicey planting this late.

The English Lavender at the base of my front-walk border is maybe five years old, and still looks good. In fact it's almost too big and bushy for its space. Every year in late November or early December (as the last of the leaves fall around here), I snip off just the stems and what remains of the flowers. There's not much evergreen stuff in my yard, so I'm happy to have the leaves around all winter, even if they are gray.

Last fall, I also split off the overgrown section and started a new division on the other side of the walkway. It seems to be doing well so far. Though obviously it's not as nice and symmetrical as the original plant.

The OP used the expression cutting them 'down' which lead me to imagine they were thinking in terms of cutting almost to the ground like herbaceous perennials or various rock plants. If you think in terms of cutting 'back' rather than 'down' you get the idea.

I have a clump which I've had for something like 9-10 years, don't remember which variety. Every spring I cut it back severely, almost to the ground, but I do wait until I see new growth coming out. I've never had a problem cutting into woody growth, the plant has been fine all these years.

I bought a variegated variety last fall, and I just trimmed it back last week. I just figured it was just a little late to wake up this year, no big deal, it will be fine.

I do believe Ken is right - I think too much moisture over winter/early spring does them in, they must have well-drained soil in order to do well long-term.

I had spanish lavender and french lavender growing for 8 years and then the double whammy of no winter rain and 70 days of above 100 and no rain did them in. I have seen Lavendar farms of texas cut them back. I cut them back and that extended their thickness and bushiness. I can't remember the timing. I think it was in fall or January. Once they rebounded slow.

They say English lavenders don't like our heat so I stay away from them. I loved the short dark grass green dark blue lavenders I saw in the foothills in Provence. I would like to get a hold of their seed. The description always leeds me to English lavenders. These took long periods of summer dry and high heat and some humidity (not much). They loved the calcarious soils.

I have Hidecote last a long time, more than five years. Grosso has not been as long lived for me. I have had HIdecote in clay loam and silty loam. We have had some temps of minus thirty in that time. So that isn't the only factor. Last winter is was very cold in a lot of places, and very cold for a long time. This is hard on a lot of plants. We also had three feet of snow from storm Atlas that kind of finished some things off. My bluebeard died, and I think it was just because it hadn't gotten ready for winter yet when the snow and cold came. I have also some kind of lavender that a friend gave me from having them reseed in her garden that does fine as well. Some of those have light blue flowers and some are dark blue. Who knows what they are. I cut mine back when growth starts in spring, back to live buds. Depending on the winter we have, most of the lavender dies back and is gray. I just leave it all winter to spruce up in spring. I don't know if yours is a goner acorn. But it seems kind of late for it to not show growth. Are early tulips in your area done? They are done here and the lavender is growing. Check the base of your plant carefully before you give up on it.

We got as low as minus 30 this year and both of mine survived under 4' feet of good snow cover. I just cut away the dry gray crispy stuff down to live gray-green foliage.

At my old eastern Washington location whenever I wanted to cut one back severely, I would always wait until signs of new growth deep down inside the shrub and cut back to just above that point. I had at least 14 huge plants and all were planted in 2004 and were still going strong in 2011 when I moved....planted in very gravelly/sandy alkaline soil and no fert what-so-ever (which they do not need).

Vera

I had lavender in two spots last year. Both were in sandy soil topped with a thick layer of old, composted manure and shredded oak leaves. The plants growing near the mailbox that were buried in deep piles of snow died. The plants further back with just the natural snowfall did fine. I trim mine back every spring when new leaves start to show. I just leave 4-5 inches so the plant keeps it's neat, mounded shape. I try to collect seeds every year so I have new plant starts in case the old ones don't survive, or I decide I need more somewhere else.

Martha

Only used 'Munstead' and 'Hidcote' extensively.

I agree strongly with MG above. When they get woody and ratty-looking it's best to replace these lavenders. They're cheap as MG says.

As far as I'm concerned, there's are some perennials which it's best to periodically replace. This is especially true for smaller perennial gardens.

Got tired of cutting mine back hard every year when it would grow so big it grew over the driveway. Over the years it really had gotten woody. It also was a good leaf collector and I was always cleaning dead oak leaves out of it. My DH dug it up for me and we replaced it with a dwarf I picked up at Lowes called Mini Blue. We'll have to see how it does. The original plant was 6 years old and was still going strong - too strong!

Linda

I'm not understanding the not cutting into woody growth of lavender - ?. IME, this is a misconception - I've never had ANY problem cutting into woody growth.

Agree MXK. Have done it frequently.

But after a few years the lavenders were still getting to look like the work-end of a broom which needs replacing.

Last week, had someone tell me they wanted a garden with just lavenders in it. I should have advised them to move to southern France and get in the perfume business.

I don't mean to insult lavenders, lovely plants, but perhaps they're more attractive in their youth.

There is a big difference in the types of lavenders and whether you can cut them back safely or not. French Lavender and Spanish Lavender is the same thing and they do not like to be severely cut back at all. English Lavender is totally different and doesn't mind it so much. You have to know what you have to know whether you can cut it back more than a little trim or not.

I cut back mine almost to the ground in early spring and it has grown back very nice and is ready to bloom now.