About the Landscape Juice Network

Founded in 2008. The Landscape Juice Network (LJN) is the largest and fastest growing professional landscaping and horticultural association in the United Kingdom.

LJN's professional business forum is unrivalled and open to anyone within within the UK landscape industry

LJN's Business Objectives Group (BOG) is for any Pro serious about building their business.

For the researching visitor there's a wealth of landscaping ideas, garden design ideas, lawn advice tips and advice about garden maintenance.

Advice needed on moving or propagating lavender

Hi all you experts. I have a number of good sized clumps of lavender dotted around the site left over from when the place was a commercial nursery. I want to move some to a new border I'm trying to establish but have read that they don't like being moved. If trying to dig them up by hand (not a small job in our "soil") is likely to cause damage, would it be feasible to move them with a JCB (with backhoe) so that a big enough chunk of soil would be moved intact so the plant didn't realise it had moved. I tried propagating from cuttings when we first got here but failed miserably.Thanks,Roger

You need to be a member of Landscape Juice Network to add comments!

Join Landscape Juice Network

Votes: 0
Email me when people reply –

Replies

  • Hi Colin,
    Thanks for the reply. The soil is not heavy in the "clay" sense. It's very sandy and compacted. I have no idea of the extent of the rootball. I guess that as I have quite a few, I ought to just bite the bullet and move one and see how it goes.
    It may be some time before I know whether I've succeeded or not :-)
    Cheers,
    Roger
  • Hi Bigyin,

    If the plants are quite large and bare at the base with just topgrowth, there's a really easy way of propagating them. Dig a hole large enough to hold almost all of the plant, lift the lavender out and drop it into the large hole, so that the top foliage is a little above ground level. Backfill over most of the plant with decent compost, to the level of where the foliage starts on the upper branches (it's a little bit like extreme layering, and it should look like you've got a load of randomly placed small lavender plants). If you leave the plants like that for a year or so, they will develop new rootgrowth on the buried stems so all you need to do is cut the new plants with some rootgrowth from the rest of the old plant. It's one of the easiest way to propagate lavenders and get good healthy plants from old tired stock.
  • Thanks Ohio and Andrew for your input. It's useful to know the right sort of planting medium to use once I succeed in moving them.
    I've never heard of that method of propagation Andrew. Very interesting. A bit like earthing up spuds by the sound of it.
    However, I'm still left with the problem of digging them up. They are roughly a metre cube (I'll post a photo if it helps) and assuming the root ball is the same size as the top, that's a hell of a lot of digging. I was also hoping to move them and plant them straight away. From what you say, that's not going to be easy. What do you think would be the effect on their health if I trimmed them right back to make it easier to access the root ball ?
  • Hi Geor --- Roger, good answer from Andrew, but you don't need to dig one up - just earth up like your potatoes, put a square wooden frame around to contain the soil maybe. As for cuttings here is a quote from The Well Tempered Garden by Christopher Lloyd (this one book told me more (of what I wanted to Know) than 3 C&G's) - "Lavender cuttings can be made at any season, but root most readily when young vegetative shoots taken from young, strongly growing stock (not from old runts on their last legs) are made in early September, dipping the trimmed ends in a rooting compound. Insert the cuttings into a box of gritty compost. Water them in and keep them in a ventilated cold frame. By June they will show that they have rooted by making new shoots, and can then be lined out in the open. The next move will be to their permanent sites either the same autumn or a year later. If you have no frames, the cuttings can be rooted in the open, on a light piece of soil; but it will be advisable to cover them with cloches." --------- I have a customer just now who wants a lavender "hedge" but its going to take over a hundred plants - I wish I'd started some off two years ago.
  • Hi Pete,
    Thanks very much for that. It looks like my best bet would be to try the earthing up and take some cuttings as well. Must remember to take some before and after pics.
    Thanks again to all who offered advice.
    Roger (Geor----)
This reply was deleted.

LJN Sponsor

Advertising

PRO

How Do You Qualify A Sales Lead?


I don't know about you, but our phones and emails are starting to get busy with enquiries. I've learned over the years that it's all too easy to answer the phone, arrange a consultation and then spend a couple of hours with a prospective client…

Read more…
Comments: 0