Forget the flagrant seductiveness of rose and gardenia perfumes: a couple of hundred years ago, lavender was the sexiest scent, possibly because it was stored with sheets and undergarments to keep away the moths, so the scent was associated with bedrooms, beds, and sex.
Queen Victoria was passionately fond of lavender. She also seems to have been passionately fond of her husband, and their nightly endeavours, which may possibly be why she ordered that all the royal woodwork be polished with lavender-scented beeswax and linseed oil.
The palaces should have been seething with passion... though given the failure to bathe regularly, lack of dry-cleaning and effective sewerage, possibly the lavender scent was diminished enough so there were no orgies under the royal table, at least that anyone has recorded.
There is also a rumour that Queen V's knickers were dried on lavender bushes, but as she had 365 pairs of underpants, each one numbered, there must have been a heck of a lot of bushes to dry them on, as royal wash days were infrequent.
Queen V's lavender was English lavender, of course, not just because it belonged to the empire, but because English lavender gives the clearest lavender scent. Others, like French lavender, have a distinct camphor undertone, and there are now many lavender varieties bred specifically for scent production.
Even one or two bushes by the front door gives lovely whiffs, especially on hot days. Ours began blooming about a month ago, and just walking past is enough for at least four or five deep breaths of lavender.
There are dozens of species of lavender for sale in Australia at the moment, all fragrant, and with a wide range of flowering and growing habits. All, however, need full sunlight - the more the better.
Grow lavender plants in a rockery, under the clothesline, along the garden path, in a special lavender garden of their own with pebble mulch around it or against a stone wall, so they get reflected heat and sunlight. Lavenders also grow well on sunny banks, the kind that are too steep for much else to grow.
Just keep lavenders away from tall plants so that they have good air circulation and a full day of sun. They'll grow for a while in a massed bed of perennials, especially in dry weather, but eventually wilt in the humidity.
Most importantly, lavender likes an alkaline soil, and most Australian soils are acid. Give your lavender a dusting of lime once every year or two and it will be much hardier, stronger and long-lived.
I also cut the branches of my lavender back by about a third after flowering, or when I pick the blooms. Theoretically this is every year but in reality it's when I get around to it, which is every three years or so.
Hard pruning really does extend the life of your lavender bush, so that instead of lasting only a few years it will survive for decades. Lavender can get "woody" - develop lots of thick wood that soon dies, snaps off, and various wood rots can then invade the rest.
Just think of wild lavender growing down a sunny rocky hillside with alkaline soil, occasionally eaten by wild sheep or goats - but not too many and not too often - and you'll realise what your bushes need to be happy in your garden.
English Lavender (L. angustifolia) is perhaps the most common lavender in our climate, with deep purple flowers, intensely fragrant and growing to less than a metre. There are many cultivars of English lavender - white flowered 'var. alba', pink 'var rosea', dwarf 'Hidcote' and richly fragrant, dark purple flowered 'Munstead'.
Once you become addicted you might try French lavender (L. dentata), a sprawling, soft, green-grey bush with longer softer leaves than English lavender and laxer stems and flower spikes. Italian or Spanish lavender (L. stoechas) is about the same height as English lavender, but a more delicate bush, with grey-green leaves
Allardii lavender (L. allardii) is an incredibly vigorous bush, but with rather coarse, strongly indented grey leaves. It's possibly the most drought tolerant. Allardii lavender tends to grow fast, tall and straight then suddenly gets woody and collapses all over the place. The scent is nowhere near as pure as that of English lavender, but still pretty good.
I grew green lavender (L. viridis, L. stoechas var viridis) for a while just because of the nursery rhyme, 'lavender blue, dilly dilly, lavender green'. Green lavender is less hardy than most lavenders, a small, soft, green-leafed plant with what appear to be green flowers - really only the bracts are green and the flowers are an insignificant white.
Then there is Dutch lavender, Spikenard, Spike (L. latifolia or L. spica), frost tender Canary Island Lavender (L. mulitifida subspecies canariensis) lemon-scented lavender (L. citriodora), L. burmannii with camphor-scented leaves, the small, hairy Woolly Lavender (L. lanata) and the frost-sensitive fern-leafed lavender (L. multifida)... and many, many others.
And if you decide to dry your knickers on the lavender, beware of bees trapped in the folds when you put the washing away. Lavender's scent may sexy, but a bee sting is not.
This week I am:
- Speaking on Sunday at Mona for the Braidwood Open Gardens to benefit Braidwood Preschool. All questions answered!
- Weeding the sneaky weeds that escaped the last good 'soil tickle' and are about to overshadow the young basil and parsley.
- Remembering I have forgotten to plant the melons and pumpkins, both of which do well in droughts.
- Discovering that a maple tree I thought had died is merely being eaten leaf by leaf by two possums, Madame X and X Junior, who is the same size as his mum but still insists on riding on her back. No wonder she sticks to the one tree to feed. The tree will recover - when Junior moves on.
- Watching last year's red kale decide to stop flowering and just put out new leaves. Has it mutated into a perennial?
- Still feasting on mulberries, avocadoes, and oranges but a little tired of finding 101 things to do with cumquats. I'm now leaving them for the birds.
