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Lavender:
The Grower's Guide by Virginia McNaughton
Hardcover / 2000
Review by John MacGregor, jonivy@earthlink.net –
Authoritative and reliable information on lavenders has long been difficult to come by. To find it, one had to delve through catalogs of herb nurseries and a variety of botanical journals and herb society publications. Books on the subject have generally been written uncritically by hobbyists or by professional writers who have little personal experience with lavenders and rely on interviews and previous publications for their information. Fallacies have been picked up and repeated ad infinitum until they are accepted as fact.
Not anymore! At last, here is a book written by botanist who has devoted most of her professional life to the study of the genus Lavandula and who now manages, with her husband Dennis Matthews, a specialist lavender and consulting business, Lavender Downs, in Christchurch, New Zealand. Since 1987, she has been responsible for the national reference collection of lavender of the Herb Federation of New Zealand. Add to this, generally good photographs, with mostly true color and composed to illustrate clearly the differences among the various cultivars, and this well produced book is the answer to a lavender enthusiast's prayer.
Most of New Zealand has climatic conditions ideally suited to growing the hardier forms of Lavandula, and the lavender business is burgeoning there. This is reflected in the tremendous number of of new cultivars that have been selected, named, and introduced. Many of them have not yet made their way to the Northern Hemisphere. I must admit that my jaw dropped and my mouth began to water when I came to the chapter devoted to cutlivars of Lavandula stoechas. I was not surprised by the range of colors--from white through pinks, mauves, purples, yellows--even salmon-tinged pinks. I previously had grown plants of L. stoechas from open-pollinated botanical garden seed, which had yielded plants in all these hues. But in the U.S., the named cultivars commonly in commerce can be counted on one hand. In New Zealand, there are dozens!
The first three chapters are devoted to brief but knowledgeable discussion of general cultivation practices, propagation, and the more widespread pests and diseases. The real meat of the book comes with the chapter on the botany of lavender, where McNaughton describes and clearly illustrates the fine details of foliage, inflorescence, and stem which distinguish plants in the various sections of the genus and which are used to tell one cultivar from another. This is followed by a brief history of lavenders and a more detailed survey of the various sections of the genus and the species and natural hybrids in each section.
Gardeners and collectors with little botanical knowledge or interest will probably maker most use of the chapters on the cultivars of Lavandula angustifolia (the "English" lavenders), L. x intermedia (the "lavandins"), and L. stoechas (variously known as "Spanish" or "French" lavender, depending on what country you reside in). In them, each of the named cultivated varieties is described in detail, and most are displayed in photos which make it easy to compare the distinguishing characteristics of similar ones. The author has obtained most of them from multiple sources in Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., and the U.K., and where the same lavender is sold under different names or different forms have been given the same name, she has made a strong effort to trace each one back to its origin and sort out the misnomers. Wherever known, she gives the original introducer and approximate date of introduction.
The final chapter on lavender growing around the world briefly surveys the state of the lavender industry in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The sections are written by knowledgeable growers in each of these countries.
