 I'm David Salman, founder and chief Florida cultures here at High Country Gardens, and I want to show you how to plant lavender. Lavenders are some of our best herbal shrubs for the water-wise garden. They provide us with beautiful spring and summer flowers, are excellent for attracting pollinators, and provide us with the wonderful, relaxing aroma of their flowers and foliage. We sell three types of lavender, the Spanish lavender, the English lavender, and the French hybrid lavender that I'm holding in my hand. They all have a place in the garden. The Spanish lavenders are best for mild winter climates. They're hardy to roughly zone seven, mostly zone eight and warmer. The French hybrid lavenders are hardy down to zone six. The most cold hardy are the English lavenders, and thus are the most widely planted across the country. Once you remove the plants from your shipping box, and you've taken the plastic bag off of the pot, which protects the plants during shipping, and you're ready to plant, let me show you how to remove the lavender plants from their pots. Start with loosening the root ball from the sides of the pots by just gently squeezing the sides. You can push up from the bottom. Don't grab them by their hair and pull them out of the pot because that can cause some damage. Instead, gently put your fingers across the top of the soil, turn the pot upside down, and gently lift the pot off of the, sometimes you have to push down on the bottom a little bit, loosen it a little more, and gently lift the pot off of the root ball. Now, to prepare the roots for planting, it's very important to scratch them out, physically cutting through the roots, where you cut a root, where there's one cut, you'll get two or three new roots, so it's a very beneficial thing to do, so don't be afraid. You can use the corner of a tag or a pocket knife, and you want to make a series of vertical quarter inch deep cuts on the sides of the pots, particularly the corners. When it right down the corner, cut those roots, come to the bottom, you can see a nice mat of roots on the bottom, so you want to do a cross hatch. Because if you don't do this, the roots are going to hold the shape of the pot, and the plant really won't grow out into the surrounding soil, and will tend to be stunted. Now, just gently with your fingertips rough out the sides of the root ball, so it has a fuzzy look, it's ready to plant. Now I've previously prepared the hole with the soil amendments, and I would refer you to how to plant video on the site to get the particulars. Place the plant down in the hole. In the western United States or air climates, I like to plant slightly deeper than the surrounding soil. In moisture climates east of the Mississippi, you want to plant level with the surrounding soil. You gently fill in with the amended backfill, with the tips of your fingers, or your trowel, just gently firm the soil into place. With the additional soil, this is very important. Make a well, or a saucer, around the plant to hold the irrigation water. Irrigation, proper watering and irrigation after transplanting is just essential to overall transplanting success. So here we have a nice saucer that will hold a decent amount of water. The tag is not only good for scratching out the roots, but it will identify the plants that you're putting into the garden, so include those in the hole. Stick it into the side. Okay. Now, we mentioned the different types of lavender that we sell. The French hybrid lavender are summer bloomers. The more cold hearty English lavender like you see here are generally late spring and early summer blooming. So by planting both English lavender and the French hybrid, you can have 8 to 10 weeks of blooming lavender plants out in your garden. So I recommend utilizing both. If you're in a milder climate, the Spanish lavender bloom very early, and generally you won't use them in most places where you plant the English and French hybrid varieties. In terms of a plant care on your lavender, water regularly. A good deep soaking, fill this little saucer or well twice every time you water, and you do this one to three times a week depending on the daytime highs. Lavender is very sensitive to not enough water, so you want to be sure that you soak them thoroughly when you do water and do this right through the first growing season. You can plant lavender in spring and fall, but in zone 5 climates, I generally recommend sticking to a spring schedule for your lavender plantings. And when pruning do not fall prune, you want to let the lavender stand over the winter. And then come back in mid spring, you wait until they start to wake up a little and you see a little bit of green along the stem, and then you do your mid spring pruning. You can deadhead the plants during the summer growing season, and that's desirable. But again, do not prune hard in the fall because that will weaken the lavender plants and might prevent them from coming through the winter in good shape. The biggest mistake in planting lavender is basically not watering them enough. So water thoroughly and watch the color of the plants. If they get a little pale and yellow, you may be watering a little too much. But in general, when the weather is hot, they're a thirsty plant, that first growing season. If you have any additional questions about how to plant and care for your lavender, you can refer to the specific lavender product pages or call customer service.