While the forest flashes purple, the tough garden lavenders are blooming too. Some lavenders do well here, beautiful to see and to smell, needing little attention beyond the occasional prune, appealing to neither possums nor horses, but adored by bees.
My most prolific is the French Lavender, Angustifolia dentata (see the finely ‘toothed’ leaves), which grows very easily from cuttings and doesn’t care how poor the soil I stick it in. The colour of the small flowers on the spikes is truly lavender, not purple.
The other one that flourishes here is the Italian Lavender, Lavendula stoechas, much darker and stranger in shape.
The petals on the spikes are very small, very deep purple, but the the tall lavender bracts on top remain like feather head-dresses even after the petals are finished. It makes a most impressive bush.
How generous such plants are, to flower like this every year and demand so little of me.