Lavender plants fill California gardens with beautiful purple blooms and wonderful scents that everyone loves. Many gardeners think dividing these fragrant plants is a simple way to get more lavender for their yards.
However, splitting lavender apart can actually cause more problems than it solves, and you might end up losing your favorite plants instead of multiplying them.
1. Lavender Has Woody Stems That Don’t Recover Well
Unlike soft, flexible plants that bounce back quickly, lavender develops tough, woody stems as it matures. When you try cutting through these hard stems to divide the plant, you create wounds that rarely heal properly.
Most lavender varieties grown in California develop this woody character after just two or three years. The damaged areas become entry points for diseases and pests that can kill your entire plant within weeks. Instead of getting two healthy plants, you often end up with none at all because the woody tissue simply cannot regenerate new roots like softer plants can.
2. Root Systems Are Too Shallow For Safe Splitting
Lavender roots spread wide but stay surprisingly close to the surface, rarely going deeper than twelve inches into the ground. This shallow network makes it nearly impossible to divide the plant without destroying most of its delicate root hairs…