Lavandula angustifolia Hidcote - True Lavender

The Lavandula angustifolia 'Hidcote', also known as True lavender or English lavender, is a shrublet with a very compact habit, featuring evergreen silver-green aromatic foliage and abundant summer flowering in spikes of dark purple highly scented flowers. Even in the middle of winter, its rounded shape and silver foliage will brighten up the garden!

The Lavandula angustifolia 'Hidcote' belongs to the family of Lamiaceae and is native to the Mediterranean regions of southern Europe. This lavender variety forms a bush of small size, 60cm (24in) in all directions, with an upright, very compact, dense, and vigorous habit, forming a rounded bushy clump. Its decorative evergreen foliage consists of narrow aromatic leaves of a beautiful silver-green color. In summer, this lavender is covered with numerous dark purple highly scented and melliferous flowers, carried by short cylindrical spikes at the end of woody stems.

This 'Hidcote' lavender, like most other lavenders, requires to be planted in full sun in an ordinary soil (even dry and stony), very well-drained. In sunny and warm locations, its silver-green foliage will be radiant and its purple flowers will exude an intense fragrance. As an ornamental and Mediterranean plant par excellence, lavender can be used in flower beds, as a standalone plant, for borders, rockeries, pots, seaside gardens, and even as a low flowering hedge.

With its graphical aspect, the color of its foliage, and its purple flowers, a multitude of possibilities are available to the gardener. The 'Hidcote' lavender can be associated with grasses that, with their tousled habit, will contrast with its rounded shape and create a very graphic scene. It will also work wonders at the base of climbing roses, paired with shrubs such as cistus, landscape roses, shrubby salvias; or mixed with Iris germanica, daylilies, and poppies. You can also create beautiful pots to place on the terrace or balcony. It is also possible to mix several lavender varieties together, creating a harmonious and elegant composition, both in terms of flower and foliage colors, as well as plant size and volume.

Properties: Lavender, being a very melliferous plant, contributes to the preservation of bees: the nectar of its flower attracts bees, making it one of the most renowned honeys.

Lavandula angustifolia is a medicinal plant, with its therapeutic virtues having been widely used in the past: its essential oil has antiseptic, antispasmodic, healing, depurative, diuretic properties.

Anecdote: In Roman times, women who wanted to secretly taste wine (a beverage that was forbidden to them) would chew a few sprigs of lavender to perfume their breath and deceive the vigilance of their husbands.