The Lavender Lover’s Handbook – A Book Review

Lavender is one of my favorite garden plants and garden scents. I love the green-gray foliage and the purple spiky flowers that sit right at the ends of the long stems. It makes me happy to watch the bees and butterflies zipping in and out as they partake of the lavender’s goodness. My husband teases me because I have so many lavender plants tucked away in almost every corner of our yard. Funny part is that I have a few more patches planned and he just doesn’t know it yet.

Now that I have read The Lavender Lover’s Handbook I feel much better equipped not only to make a good choice in varieties but I also know better how to prune and care for my lavender. It seems I have been doing a few things completely wrong as far as maintaining my lavender plants.

The book, The Lavender Lover’s Handbook from Timber Press, is a visual treat from start to finish. It really is the sort of book you could just page through and enjoy the colorful images. But, after reading and studying this book over the summer, I have found that the information shared in its pages is worth slowing down to read.

Why do I love this book and recommend it to gardeners?

• 1. Practical value: This book will help you decide which of the over 100 varieties available would be a good fit for your climate and garden space whether that space is a border, a hedge, a container, or a rock garden. There are lists for top picks for cold weather, humid summers, strongest scents, shade of purple desired, early bloomers, and all season bloomers.
• 2. Detailed Help for Planting, Pruning, Harvesting, and Drying: This is by far the most useful section to those of us who already have lavender in our gardens. I gleaned many tips for making better use of my lavender and making sure my plants will flourish and bloom for a long time to come. This is the section that showed me I was pruning my lavender all wrong…..now I know how to do it properly and I will let you know how it goes next summer.
• 3. Exciting suggestions for using your lavender: Now that I have a huge lavender harvest each year, I am looking for ways to use this herb to its full potential. The section on lavender recipes has captured my interest with things like lavender sugar, herbal vinegar with lavender, and lavender cookies. Besides recipes, there is a section on lavender scented creations: lavender wands, lavender wreaths, lavender fire starter(!), and also learning how to use lavender in your household cleaners.

Whether you are a beginning lavender gardener or a veteran, you are going to find this book a treat to read. It has found its way onto my gardening reference shelf for easy help and fresh ideas as we go through lavender season.

You can read more about the book on Timber Press: Lavender Lover’s Handbook by Sarah Berringer Bader.

I received these four books from Timber Press to review and I received no other compensation. The opinion expressed here is my own after reading and using the book in my own garden. You can read my review of Gardening Projects for Kids if you are interested in hearing how much I loved that book!