How to grow lavender

Three to try
• 'Pink Perfume' forms a mound of grey green foliage that produces pink flowers from July until the first frost.

• 'Hidcote Blue' forms compact plants with green foliage and deep blue-purple blooms that flower from June to August.

• 'Potpourri' white lavender forms a bushy plant of green foliage, with white blooms from June to September.

All three are hardy to zone 5; purchase plants at your local nursery, or find seeds and germinating tips at Veseys.

How to dry it – and enjoy it
Harvest flower spikes just when the first few flowers are opening on each. Cut stems in the soft new growth, in the morning after the dew has dried and before the sun gets too hot. Gather into small bunches, and tie each near cut ends (or secure with elastic band), then hang upside down in dark, dry, airy, dust-free room.
 
When thoroughly dry, gently rub down each stem to remove flowers.

Store dried flowers in an airtight jar to sprinkle into bathwater, or tie a handful into a pretty hanky to make an "instant" sachet for a linen cupboard or drawer (while the lavender lends its fragrance to the fabrics, it also deters moths). Slightly crush the dried flowers every so often to freshen their scent.

You can also use the dried flowers in the kitchen. Freeze them in ice cubes for summer drinks, and add to herbed butters, sweet desserts, tea mixtures and savoury meat and cheese dishes.

Or indulge in a recent trend and shower your just-married friends with dried lavender, instead of confetti.

Although it's not native to Canada, disease-resistant lavender is a good green choice, as well. Its easy-care attributes mean that it doesn't want any chemical help to grow and, once established, requires almost no watering. Its nectar-rich flowers attract butterflies, bees and other beneficial pollinators to the garden – more important than ever, now that these are being threatened worldwide.

Purple prose and poetry
• Learn more about gardening with lavender in Lavender: The Grower's Guide (Timber, 2000, $33.95) by Virginia McNaughton.

• Learn more about cooking with lavender in The Lavender Cookbook (Perseus Books Group, 2004, $21.50) by Sharon Shipley.

• Introduce your children to "Lavender’s Blue" and other classic nursery rhymes with the facsimile edition of the beloved and beautifully illustrated 1950s classic, Lavender's Blue (Oxford University Press, 2007, $21.95).

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