There are over 450 different varieties of lavender. Some are cold hardy, some are not. When you buy your lavender, make sure that you research if that variety can survive in your area. All of the lavender that I grow on my farm are now all zoned to survive SW Missouri winters. With that said, Missouri has some crazy winters, and in recent years the lavender plants are not getting a chance to go dormant before they are getting shocked with extremely cold temperatures. That is why I am now recommending for people to cover their lavender plants when the weather drops below 20. Here is my journey in over wintering lavender.
I started growing lavender in 2017 with 11 Grosso lavender plants and 11 Hidcote Blue lavender plants, planted in two small rows. I had heard that lavender was hard to grow, which lead me to do some research on which lavender varieties I would be able to grow in SW Missouri. Grosso (a hybrid) and Hidcote Blue (an English lavender) both are zoned down to zone 5 which covers our zone of zone 6 (before the updated growing zone map this year).
Even though Grosso and Hidcote Blue lavender was supposed to be able to survive Missouri winters, I still covered them up when the temperatures dropped. I don't have any pictures of how I did that for the first couple of years, but if my memory is correct I believe we just placed halved 55 gal barrels between the two rows and used a tarp to cover them. Did I really need to cover the lavender? Probably not, but I was being overly cautious with the plants. This is something that I wish I had continued to do.
In 2018, much to my Dads annoyance, I more than doubled the amount of lavender plants I had. I added Munstead, Provence, and Spanish lavender to the mix. All of the lavender were zoned for this area, the only exception was the Spanish lavender (which I was able to keep alive until the winter of2022). That variety is only an annual in SW Missouri. Even with the additional lavender, we still used barrels and tarps to cover the lavender when the temps dropped to low for the Spanish lavender.
In the below image you can see what the lavender looked live in the spring of 2018. The Grosso over wintered very well, and while the Hidcote Blue did survive, I had to cut out a lot of dead branches on each plant.
Let me tell you, the winter of 2018/2019 was a learning experience. While I successfully over wintered the Spanish lavender, it was not easy. Due to the increased span of my lavender beds, I had a hard time keeping the tarps from blowing away. Every time I would go out to cover the plants I had to add extra "weight" to the top of the tarps between each row to help hold down the tarp. That was not easy and it was back breaking when the wind was really blowing. This experience had me working on finding a better way to protect my lavender in the winter time.
For the winter of 2019 I came up with an arch system that uses PVC pipe and cattle panels to hold the tarps up over the plants and I had to add rope tiedowns over the top of the tarp to help keep the wind from popping the tarp too much. This is the system that I have used for 3 of my lavender beds for the past 5 years. I have adjusted the amount of cattle panels used over the years but the basic arch is still the same.
From 2019 to 2022 I was starting to get laxed with covering up the lavender, the winters had been so mild that it really wasn't needed. That all changed with the winter of 2022. That year I had planted over 400 lavender plants, more than doubling the number of lavender plants I had. When winter came around I wasn't worried about covering the plants. That was until the artic vortex hit, and by that time it was too late, there was no way I would have been able to get all of the plants covered. So I just prayed and hoped for the best. When the spring of 2023 arrived, the results of my laziness were seen. I lost over 90% of my lavender plants.
That was a devastating blow for me, both financially and emotionally. But I regrouped and got to planting again. When last winter hit I thought I'd be ok, I mean what are the chances of us getting another artic vortex, right? Wrong! I wasn't able to get everything covered but I was able to get 80% of it covered, and it showed me just how important it is to protect my plants. The plants that I got covered survived (with just a few not), but the ones that I didn't get covered, almost all of those died.
What the past couple years has taught me is that I HAVE to be prepared for the extremes. I have also learned that if want to expand like I want to and plan to, I have to have a better way to protect my lavender (and any other plants I have). The past winters have forced me to figure out how to work smarter and not harder. I am now working on fixing permeant arches or rows over the lavender rows/beds. I have started implementing new protection systems, but they still need some work.
As I continue to work on my systems I will bring you along for the journey.
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