How often to water lavender

The interval

Lavender has two regimes. A new plant, and any plant in a pot, is watered about every 10 days in the growing season. An established plant in the ground is not watered at all outside a severe drought. In winter a pot wants water about every 30 days, and often less. Growing season means the warm, bright months from spring to early autumn, roughly March to September in the northern hemisphere and September to March in the southern. Winter is the cold, short-day part of your own year, when the danger is wet roots.

The Royal Horticultural Society says newly planted lavender should be watered regularly during its first summer, and that once established it is drought tolerant and rarely needs watering. In containers it says plants dry out quickly in summer, wanting water once or twice a week in hot weather, while in winter the containers should be kept fairly dry. Check by pushing a finger 5 cm into the compost and by lifting the pot. A pot that is dry that deep and light in the hand is ready.

Soak and dry means watering slowly until water runs from the drainage hole, and then leaving the pot alone until the compost has dried right out again. The RHS advises a pot with large drainage holes and up to a quarter of coarse grit by volume, and in the ground a mound or raised bed on heavy soil. Humidity is low for this plant, and it likes moving air.

Wet roots are what kill lavender. NC State Extension says English lavender does not like wet feet and dies out in heavy clay, and that root rot is caused by overwatering, and the RHS warns of root rots that bring on an early death, with plants in damp compost more prone. A lavender in a pot that has dried right out is a smaller problem than one in damp compost, because a soak puts it right.

What is particular to this plant is the winter. Lavender takes cold far better than it takes wet, so shelter the pot from rain, against a wall, in a cold frame or in an unheated greenhouse, rather than from frost.

Related guides

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