Lavender is right up there with roses and sweet peas as one of our favourite plants, and with good reason: few other plants flower so long and so beautifully, and their rich perfume can fill a garden.
Lavenders prefer sun and free-draining, quite poor soil. Once established, they tolerate dry conditions well, making them great container plants: try combining with herbs like thyme and chives for a fragrant potful to pop outside the back door. In late summer, trim off spent flowers to within 2cm of the previous year’s growth to make a neat, compact, silvery mound – lavender is evergreen, so you get to enjoy it all winter, too.