My clients recently purchased this property in Washington. There was a new lavender garden that was planted just prior to the sale. Lavender is one of those plants that everyone wants but Litchfield County rarely provides what the plant wants or needs. Lavender needs a soil that is free draining. It prefers pure sand or another boney, low fertility soil. It also prefers alkaline soil. Connecticut soils tend to be a loamy clay. Our soils also tend to have a lower ph. The existing soil conditions for this lavender garden was entirely clay. Soil that would hold moisture much longer than Lavender would prefer. By the end of the first spring, about half of the plants were either dead or struggling. Rather than replace the struggling/dead plants, I suggested we replace the monoculture with a mixture of perennials, bulbs and flowering shrubs to extend the interest from spring through fall. Here is what we replaced the Lavender with after the second summer.
