This week’s perennial is not just one that is beautiful to look at, but also one that has a lovely fragrance. With its slender lavender blue flowers reaching about 36”, it provides enchantment for a cottage garden, definition as a landscape border, or striking when used for massing.
‘Provence’ Lavender is a very fragrant French lavender hybrid perennial, and is heralded as a much better specimen than its English lavender counterpart for its humidity tolerance and disease resistance.
Source: Bluemoon Perennials
Its botanical name is Lavandula x intermedia ‘Provence’, named for the area where it is grown in the Provence region in southern France. There, this French lavender perennial is harvested for use in the perfume industry, and skin care products.
This sun perennial blooms from mid-summer into the fall, if the spent blooms are removed. Mid-summer can be hot and dry, but ‘Provence’ Lavender tolerates it well. It actually prefers a dry to medium well-drained soil.
Source: Colorado State
Its leaf shape looks like the herb rosemary, and the evergreen groundcover Candytuft.
Source: White Flower Farm
Its flowers, a top graceful arching stems, sway in a breeze, and are attractive to bees and butterflies. One source indicates the hardiness zones for ‘Provence’ Lavender are zone 5 – 7 in the south, and 5 – 10 in the west. For the south, it can be used as an annual.
Source: Millbrook Lavender Farm
It is deer resistant, and the flowers and stems can be dried for dry flower arrangements, and, used in making potpourri and scented sachets.
