05/26/2026
Over the last thirty years, I’ve sent my fair share of lavender to the compost heap. They tell you it's a "low maintenance" plant, which usually translates to "you'll feel especially foolish when it dies." Most folks kill theirs by trying to help. You see the stems turning brown, the leaves drooping, and it looks a bit sad. So you naturally do the most logical, caring thing a gardener can do. Please don't do it. With lavender, what looks exactly like dying of thirst is usually something else entirely. And acting on your first gardener's instinct—doing what works for almost every other plant—is usually the final blow. Plus, there’s a sneaky little mistake happening in most garden beds that I call "murder by proxy." You might not even be touching your lavender, but you're slowly finishing it off anyway. I’ve written down the five ways we accidentally send our lavender to an early grave, and why simply getting out of its way is often the best medicine. The causes are perfectly obvious, but only once you know what you're actually looking at.
