Lavender is such a fun plant to grow as it adds a beautiful scent to your garden or room. What’s even cooler is to have it shaped like a tree!
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Having your own lavender tree is fairly simple, it just takes some specific pruning to create this lavender topiary!
What Is A Lavender Tree?
A lavender tree is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a tree-shaped lavender plant! In reality, it’s just a lavender plant that has been trimmed to resemble a tree.
The image above is an example of the beginning of a lavender tree topiary – starting by cutting off the lower branches and only allowing upper ones to grow.
Topiary
Making this lavender tree is in the art of topiary. Topiary is just trimming shrubs or bushes into an ornamental shape. As lavender is shrub-like and has a woody base, this is an ideal plant to work with!
Choose Your Lavender
The first thing is to choose your lavender plant. Either grow your lavender seedlings from trimmings, or purchase a young lavender standard topiary plant from your local plant shop.
Almost any lavender will work, it really just depends if you want the traditional scent of lavender from the English lavender, or would prefer the Spanish or French varieties!
Younger is better because it will be more open to changing the shape of it, rather than one with a stem that’s already pretty set in how it wants to grow.
Decide if you want to grow the lavender tree in a container or in the soil, and this may determine the type of lavender to grow as not all of them prefer the same environment!
If you choose to grow this lavender in a container, you could even have this lavender topiary as an indoor plant!
Setup – Prepare Your Plant
So to make and maintain a lavender tree, you’ll need the lavender plant, a pole to stabilize, some string/ties, and pruning shears.
Start by choosing a place to plant the lavender, if you haven’t already. These grow really well in a raised garden bed in full sun, if you’re unsure of where to start this plant. Make sure to choose well drained soil, and make sure that the lavender you chose works in your growing zone. If it won’t survive a winter outside, choose a larger container to grow this in that’s large enough for the plant’s root ball to have some space to grow into.
Try to get your lavender setup before the main growing season, so you can see it’s beautiful blooms instead of trimming too early to create the shape. This also allows for the honey bees to visit your plants, if they’re blooming throughout the season.
Put the pole or a tall stick from your garden as close next to the base of the lavender plant as you can get to. Push this in a few inches to the soil. This won’t hurt the plant, and the closer you get to the base of the plant, the better for a straighter base.
Then choose the straightest branch of the lavender plant, and tie that onto the pole. Tie near the top and towards the bottom for extra stability.
Have this tight enough that the branch will stay attached, but not so tight that the plant is being suffocated.
Trim – Creating the Shape
Now the fun part! Growing the lavender and trimming it into shape. Cut off all branches except the one that’s straightest that you’ve already tied to the post.
Allow this to grow for a while, and when you start seeing more growth, remove any that are growing down below the point you want to become the tree shape. Prune as closely to where the branch meets the main stem as you can.
Allow some branches that are up towards the top to start growing, and keep letting branches that are at the top to grow, while trimming off any that are below a certain height.
You will eventually get the lavender to grow in the shape of a tree!
Proper Care – Lavender Tree Topiary Care
Lavender does need regular pruning, at the end of the flowering season trim down to about 1/3 of the height in the green lavender part. Do not cut down at the stem that you’ve worked to look like trunk of the plant. If you do, there’s a chance you could accidentally kill your lavender plant. If you don’t, you may get the bottom leaves of your lavender browning.
You may occasionally have to remove small branches from the stem, but more often it will be about shaping the top to how you’d like it to look. This is mostly no nonsense maintenance, that just needs to be done once or twice a year.
Keep in mind that if you try to even out the ends like with a hedge to make a perfect circle or something by just cutting off the ends, you may end up with a lavender plant that does not bloom.
Some gardening tips: After the lavender has bloomed, deadhead or remove the entire branch with that lavender head to allow it to potentially bloom another time this season! If you just deadhead, your lavender might not flower again that season, so cutting down some of the leaves is best for the longest time of flowers blooming!
Having your own lavender tree is surprisingly easy and adds a fun new element to your garden! Get your pruning shears ready to make a forest of lavender! Or choose different shapes with this new skill learned.
