Pretty Polly is a variety of Lavender Stoechas, the French or Spanish Lavender. These Lavender plants all have more showy and unique flower heads with bracts or ‘ears’ on top. Not only do they make stunning garden plants, the flowers emerge significantly earlier that the traditional English varieties sometimes as early as late April. If the Lavender plants are kept deadheaded, they will usually continue to flower through until September.
Stoechas Lavenders look great as solitary plants or in small groups in a sunny, well drained flower bed. They are also great in containers on a sunny terrace where their sweet honey-like scent can be appreciated or they could be clipped to border a sunny path or flower bed (although we do have a page of the most popular varieties used as Lavender Hedging Plants).
These lovely plants aren’t quite as hardy as their angustifolia and intermedia cousins, but they will certainly take -5C and probably more. The most important thing with these and all lavender plants is to plant in well-drained soil (they hail from the Mediterranean regions), few lavenders are killed by frost, but many are lost because of wet boggy soil.
The intriguing flowers of Lavender Pretty Polly are edible and sweet to the taste, what a wonderful addition to salads and desserts if you can bear to pick them!
