Lavender Cook's collection - 12 x 9cm pots

Lavender for the kitchen gardener: two English varieties that taste as good as they smell.

In the box

• 6 × Hidcote: deep purple and compact, about 40cm, happy in a pot
• 6 × Munstead: lighter purple and a bit taller, about 60cm

Best for

• A herb bed or kitchen-door pots
• Bakes, teas, syrups and lavender sugar
• Drying for the store cupboard

The lowdown

• Both are English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia), the type usually used in cooking
• Sold as culinary herbs
• Kitchen tip: a little goes a long way. Start with a pinch of dried flowers in shortbread or scones, or bury a few heads in a jar of caster sugar for a week

Keeping them happy

Give them the sunniest spot you have and soil that drains quickly. If your ground is heavy clay, mix in a few handfuls of grthem or sharp sand first; lavender likes them lean, and neutral to chalky soil suits them fine.

Soak them once a week for roughly the first three weeks while the roots settle. After that, put the hosepipe away and only water in a long, dry spell: soggy roots are a bigger threat than drought. Once the flowers fade, clip them back into tidy mounds. Stop where there are still green leaves, because bare brown stems rarely sprout again.

What arrives

Twelve young plants, each in a 9cm pot: 6 Hidcote and 6 Munstead.

Photo: "'Lavandula angustifolia' Hidcote cultivar Henham Essex England" by Acabashi, source, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Photo: "Lavandula angustifolia Munstead 4zz" by David J. Stang, source, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.