Gardening tips for autumn: Trim lavender
It’s time the lavender hedge had a haircut


Your lavender hedge has been a dream of beauty through the summer, but now, its charm is beginning to fade. The answer to this problem is to give it a haircut. The intention is to deadhead the flowers, working carefully along, removing each faded flower back to the base of its stalk. Secateurs are the tool for this job, as shears will do a pudding-basin job. This isn't the work of a moment and, after a while, your joints will set into apparently permanent numbness, but your reward will be the customary admiring remarks.
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Country Life is unlike any other magazine: the only glossy weekly on the newsstand and the only magazine that has been guest-edited by His Majesty The King not once, but twice. It is a celebration of modern rural life and all its diverse joys and pleasures — that was first published in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year. Our eclectic mixture of witty and informative content — from the most up-to-date property news and commentary and a coveted glimpse inside some of the UK's best houses and gardens, to gardening, the arts and interior design, written by experts in their field — still cannot be found in print or online, anywhere else.
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