How to Dry Lavender From the Garden

Enjoy the beauty and fragrance of fresh lavender from the garden year-round by harvesting and drying the lavender you grow during the summer months. Here’s how to dry lavender from your garden.

Lavender is one of my favorite flowering garden plants. I especially appreciate how its frosty green mounds, which keep their shape throughout the year, provide visual interest in winter and early spring. I grow a few different popular Lavandula varieties, and I’m always amazed every summer by the sheer number of aromatic lilac-colored blooms on each plant. I have a little perennial herb garden where I grow herbs like chives, thyme, purple sage, and lavender, as well as a sun perennial bed with lavender. The scent of all the different garden herbs is so lovely on a hot day. I’ve typically just left the flowers to be enjoyed by the pollinators that populate our property, but as I collect more and more lavender plants every year, I’ve found that there are plenty of blooms to go around. I can harvest lavender for myself during the late spring and early summer and still leave plenty to be enjoyed by everyone out in the garden as well. I’ve just recently started drying lavender, and I was excited to find out how easy and satisfying the process is and how beautiful and fragrant the dried blooms are when I display them in a vase. If you’d like to give it a try this summer as well, here’s how to dry lavender.

Summer gardening essential: How to Grow Lavender Plants

Harvesting Lavender

It’s easiest to harvest lavender for this method of preservation by cutting the stems near the base of the plant, so you have long stalks to work with for tying, hanging, and drying. You can choose to harvest lavender anytime from when the buds form up until the blooms are fully open and begin to fade, depending on your preference and what you plan to use your dried lavender for. There’s no need to own a whole lavender farm if you’d like to enjoy the herbal aroma of lavender all around your home in the summer. In fact, you’ll be amazed at how much you can harvest from just a three or four plants.

I like to harvest lavender right before it blooms. If you’re planning to remove the flowers from the stems, this will result in tight dried flower buds similar to what you would get if you bought commercial dried lavender for crafts or for culinary uses. If I’m planning to display my dried lavender in a vase, I like how this method of harvesting results in beautiful, graceful arched stems with just a hint of silvery purple color at the ends.

Here’s the lavender growing in one of my little sun perennial beds. The deep purple you see in the background is perennial salvia.

Depending on your growing region and USDA hardiness zone, your lavender will probably bloom between late May and mid-July for classic English lavender varieties, with popular “Hidcote” cultivars blooming first and “Munstead” varieties blooming about 10-14 days later. This year, I began harvesting the long stems of my Munstead lavender in mid-June. At that point, the saturated, deep purple blooms of my Hidcote plant blossoms were already starting to pop.

I find that snipping 60-100 stems of lavender makes nice little bunches for drying.

Preparing to Dry Lavender

Once you have harvested your lavender stems, give them a little shake upside down to allow any loose buds or leaves to fall out and also to signal to any insects that it’s time to leave. One bonus about harvesting lavender a little early, before it’s fully in bloom, is that there won’t be many little insects or pollinators on the plant yet.

Bundle your stems up into a lovely little bouquet and tie them together with a length of garden twine, a rubber-band, or raffia. Cut a second length of twine and use that to create a little loop that you can use to hang the lavender bouquet from a hook, peg, or doorknob somewhere in your home.

The great thing about the drying process is that the lavender bundle looks lovely tied up and hanging from just about anything, so you can display it any place in your home that is cool and away from direct sunlight. There’s no need to have a special utility room or garage space set aside for this purpose.

How Long Does it Take to Dry?

Once you’ve hung your lavender in a cool, dry, well-ventilated spot away from direct sunlight, all you have to do is wait. Most people will tell you to dry for lavender for about two to four weeks before displaying it or giving it away as a gift. In my experience, it actually only takes about four days under the stems are dry right up to the tip of the blooms. At this point, the blooms should be dry enough to stand up on their own in floral arrangements or as decorations without flopping over and looking wilted.

If you’ll be storing the flower buds away in an airtight container for culinary uses, leave them the dry for the full two weeks to make sure you get all the moisture out completely.

Uses for Dried Lavender Around Your Home

My very favorite way to use dried lavender is to just keep the stems whole, display them in a vase as home decor, and marvel at their elegant beauty, but there are so many other great uses for this botanical wonder around your home as well.

Lavender buds can be displayed in a bowl or mixed with other dried petals and leaves to make a potpourri. Did you know that lavender is considered a natural insect repellant? Hang dried lavender sachets around your home to deter pests and keep your home bug-free.

Lavender essential oils and preserved lavender blossom are thought to have many soothing medicinal properties and have been reported calm feeling of anxiety. For that reason, lavender is a popular addition to homemade bath products like scrubs, handmade soaps, and candles.

There are so many different gourmet culinary uses for lavender as well, and I love the sweet floral flavor it adds to baked goods. If you’re growing edible food-grade lavender, stick to English lavender varieties as French lavender has more camphor and is more appropriate for scented craft projects Using English lavender, you can make a homemade lavender tea and then pair it with lavender vanilla shortbread cookies or lavender chocolate chip cookies for a memorable summertime afternoon tea party.