Black Bamboo

No garden should be without this wonderful plant. With its delicious scent and stalks of beautiful lavender coloured flowers it can add to almost any planting scheme.

You may struggle to recreate the great fields of lavender that you have perhaps seen when visiting Provence (perhaps best in the region of Vaison-la-Romaine) but it is still simple and impressive to create your own swathe of colour using lavender plants.

Whilst lavender is most well-known for its pale lilac flowers it also can be found with white, pink and darker purple flowers.

A Mediterranean plant with grey leaves, lavender withstands drought and high temperatures and should be planted where it will receive plenty of sun. Soil should be free-draining as lavender cannot stand having its roots in wet soil.

As well as using lavender in a mixed border it can be used as an alternative to box for creating knot gardens or for edging your borders with a low ‘hedge’.

Extremely easy to propagate. Propagate in the summer. Just pull off a healthy shoot with its slightly woody end. Choose a shoot of this year’s growth which has not flowered. Remove all the lower leaves and push it into a pot filled with cutting compost.

Lavender cuttings are so reliable that I often push the cuttings into the soil where I want it to grow and usually this works. Keep cuttings watered until they start growing and become established.

Lavandula angustifolia ‘Hidcote’ is a lovely reliable variety with blueish flowers.