Lavender Plants

I have been experimenting with striking my own lavender plants and this is my latest crop. This time I have dipped the cuttings into honey to see how they strike. I was told this can be very successful and they have been there for 3 weeks now and still look ok. There are a couple I am not sure of but time will tell.

These little pots contain the previous crop that I struck and when I potted them they all had good root systems. I am looking after these until my son comes up and then they are going into his garden. He has an area in the front garden which could suit them. But time will tell whether they will do well. He does not have a lot of time between a wife, and work, and their dogs to water the gardens so hopefully the neglect will be good for them. A couple of these plants are rosemary which I have quite a few bushes of and they like being dry so should thrive in their new home.

I was wandering round the garden early this morning and saw that the lavender bushes were covered in bees. They danced over the flowers and were hard to capture, but this one must have been greedy for honey because he sat still long enough for a photo.

When we first moved here there were a few lavender bushes that I managed to kill through overwatering so I was a bit reluctant to plant any more. However after talking to a lady on a stall at the local markets decided to give it another go about 4 years ago. This is the plant I bought, which grows bigger every year. It is a bit distorted at the moment because there used to be a bouganvillea behind it which we cut out. So there is a bit of a hole in the bush at the back.

It flowers year round, and I have to get in quickly to give it a haircut before the next lot of flowers appear. The bees just love it.

I have about 10 lavender bushes thriving in different areas of the garden

interspersed with rosemary which the bees also love.