I planted lavender into a large container 2years ago with some young mixed shrubs. The lavender has leaves and blooms over the edges of container and found base full of wood. Ive looked on web for info and all i read is not to prune a lavender plant if its all woody. Can anyone give me real advise so that i can get it to look neater for next year? Thanks ps the pic is on wrong way up
Lavender is one of those plants that won't necessarily grow back if you have to cut back into the woody part. So if you can achieve what you want by pruning back only into parts that aren't woody yet then you may be able to get it to look how you want. It's better to prune it a bit every year, that way you can keep it neat without having to cut back into the woody part.
Would it do any good if i bury the wooden base into soil to that the leaves are out or will this harm it
I think that would probably kill it--I don't know for sure, but many plants will rot if you bury their crown too deep, and lavender strikes me as a plant that would probably react that way to being planted too deep.
If you really hate the look and are going to throw the plant out otherwise you can always try trimming back into the woody area and see if it regrows at all--if you were going to toss the plant anyway then you've got nothing to lose. Otherwise all you can do is trim it back as far as you can while staying in the green.
This is what I did to rejuvinate an old Lavender, but it took two seasons. I cut half of the woody branches off, leaving some branches that still had green leaves out at the ends. New green sprouted on the pruned parts, so I followed up with pruning off the remaining long woody branches and those eventually put out new growth too. I hope this makes sense. Not sure if it will work for you, maybe I just got lucky. Even though I did all that, the plant did finally get too ugly and I pulled it.
