Growing Lavender in Pots on a Sunny Patio

By Sharpening and Caring for Garden Hand Tools
Comments 35
3 Aug 2026

Growing Lavender in Pots on a Sunny Patio

Why Lavender Earns Its Place in a Pot

Lavender is a Mediterranean shrub at heart. It wants sun, sharp drainage and lean soil — conditions a patio can deliver far more reliably than a damp border. A south- or west-facing wall soaks up heat all day and releases it slowly after dark, which suits lavender beautifully. Growing it in a container also hands you control: you can shift the pot into the sunniest corner, move it under the eaves for winter, and replace a tired plant without disturbing anything else in the garden. The scent as you brush past on a warm evening is the obvious reward.

Choose the Right Lavender for Containers

Not all lavenders behave the same way in a pot, and picking the wrong one is the quickest route to disappointment.

English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) — 'Hidcote' and 'Munstead' are the toughest and most compact, flowering from June into August. The best choice for most UK patios, and noticeably more tolerant of a wet winter than the tender types.
French and Spanish lavenders (Lavandula stoechas and relatives) — those distinctive rabbit-ear bracts, and earlier to flower. Superb in a sheltered city courtyard, risky in a frost pocket.
Lavandin (Lavandula x intermedia) — 'Grosso' and 'Provence' are big, vigorous plants with the strongest scent. Fine in a generous pot, but they will outgrow anything small within a season.

If in doubt, buy English lavender. It is the one that reliably comes back year after year.

Pot, Drainage and Compost

The single biggest cause of failure is a soggy rootball. Lavender roots rot quickly in wet compost, particularly between October and March.

Use a pot at least 30 cm across, ideally 35 cm, with a generous drainage hole. Terracotta is ideal because it breathes and dries out faster than glazed or plastic.
Stand the pot on feet or bricks so water never sits underneath it.
Mix a loam-based compost (John Innes No. 2) with horticultural grit at roughly three parts compost to one part grit. A handful of extra grit in the base of the pot, above the crocks, helps further.
Top the surface with a 2 cm layer of grit. This keeps the neck of the plant dry and suppresses weeds.

Avoid anything described as moisture-retaining, and skip the water-retaining granules altogether. Free-draining is the whole point.

Watering and Feeding

Once established, lavender is surprisingly drought-tolerant. Water thoroughly, then let the compost dry out. A good soak every week or ten days through summer is usually plenty, more during a genuine heatwave, and considerably less in spring and autumn. Always water the compost rather than the foliage, and do it in the morning if you can.

Newly planted lavender is different. For the first six to eight weeks, check the compost every few days and water when the top 3 cm feels dry to the touch. That is how the roots get going.

Feeding is where enthusiasm gets punished. Rich compost and regular liquid feeds produce soft, floppy growth with few flowers and a much shorter life. A dilute feed at roughly half strength, once in early spring, is ample. A tomato feed with a decent potash content suits lavender well because it supports flowering rather than leafy growth. Stop feeding by midsummer.

Trimming for Shape and Longevity

Trim straight after flowering, in late August or early September, while there is still warmth for the plant to recover. Take off the spent flower stems and about 2–3 cm of this year's leafy growth, shaping the plant into a rounded dome rather than a flat-topped hedge.

The golden rule: never cut back into old, leafless wood. Lavender does not reliably regrow from bare stems, and a hard cut into the brown centre usually leaves a permanent hole. If a plant has already gone leggy, bring it back in stages over two or three years instead. A light tidy-up in April, removing dead tips and any winter damage, keeps things neat before flowering begins.

Keeping It Going for Years

Repot into fresh compost every two to three years in spring, moving up only one pot size. Older specimens can be root-pruned and returned to the same container.
In wet winter areas, move pots against a house wall, raise them onto feet and tilt them very slightly so rain runs off. Cold is rarely the killer; winter wet is.
Take softwood cuttings in late summer as insurance. They root reliably and give you replacements before the parent plant turns woody.
Group lavender with rosemary, thyme and santolina for a Mediterranean corner that largely looks after itself, and let gravel mulch run between the pots.

With sun, sharp drainage and a firm hand with the secateurs, a single lavender can stay handsome in the same container for a decade — and you will have more than enough stems to dry for winter.

Planting Ideas

Creating a Wildlife Pond in a Small Garden

Use untreated timber, line the base with cardboard, and fill with a mix of topsoil and compost for healthy crops.

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5 Comments

Robert Sonny says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am

I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
Reply
- John Abraham says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am
  
  I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
  Reply
  - Robert Sonnysays Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am
    
    I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
    Reply
Robert Sonny says Jul 21, 2024 at 10:00am

I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system
Reply

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