How to grow lavender indoors (beginner-friendly)

Lavender is a Mediterranean shrub adapted to poor, chalky soil, hard sun and dry air.^[1] An indoor windowsill offers rich compost, filtered light and centrally heated humidity, which is close to the opposite on every count. That mismatch is why indoor lavender so often limps along for a few months and then dies from the roots up.

It is still worth doing. You need the right variety, a bright enough window, and a soil mix that drains harder than anything else you grow.

Can lavender be an indoor plant?

Yes, provided you can give it six to eight hours of direct sun and a sharply draining, slightly alkaline soil. Below about four hours of direct sun it survives without thriving, gets leggy, and rarely flowers. A grow light closes that gap.

Choosing a variety

Variety choice does more for your chances than anything else on this page.

Dwarf English lavenders

Compact cultivars of Lavandula angustifolia are the ones to grow indoors.^[2] They stay between 12 and 18 inches, they tolerate container life, and they carry the sweet, low-camphor scent people associate with lavender.

Two are widely available and both are reliable. ‘Munstead’ is the more compact and the earlier to flower. ‘Hidcote’ has deeper purple flowers and a slightly stronger scent. Either works on a windowsill.

Full-size and other species

Full-size English lavender reaches three feet across and wants root room a pot cannot give it. It can be kept indoors for a season, and it will decline.

French and Spanish lavender (L. stoechas, L. dentata) are less hardy and more tolerant of humidity than English lavender, which makes them a reasonable option in a damp house, though they need just as much light. Lavandin (L. x intermedia) is a large hybrid grown commercially for oil and is too big for indoors.

Starting your plant: transplants, cuttings or seed

There are three ways in, and they differ enormously in how long they take.

A nursery transplant is the fastest and the right choice for a first attempt. You get an established root system, you skip the fragile early weeks, and a spring-bought plant may flower the same year.

A cutting from a plant you already have costs nothing and takes a few weeks to root. It also produces an exact clone, which matters because named cultivars do not come true from seed.

Seed is the slow route. Lavender germinates erratically over two to four weeks, often needs a period of cold to break dormancy, and takes a year or more to reach flowering size. Seed sold as ‘Munstead’ or ‘Hidcote’ produces plants that vary noticeably from the parent.

Start with a transplant unless you have a reason not to.

Growing from a transplant

You need a healthy plant, a pot with drainage, and a free-draining mix.

Buy in spring if you can, and choose a plant with grey-green foliage right down to the base rather than one that is bare and woody at the bottom. Check the underside of the leaves for webbing or sticky residue before you take it home.

Pick a 6- to 8-inch unglazed terracotta pot. Terracotta is porous, so water evaporates through the walls as well as the surface, and for a plant this prone to root rot that is a real advantage over plastic or glazed ceramic. This 6-inch terracotta pot is the one we use. Make sure it has a drainage hole.

Do not go much larger than the root ball. A big pot holds a reservoir of wet soil the roots cannot reach, and that is how lavender rots.

Fill it with cactus or succulent potting mix, or make your own from two parts ordinary potting soil to one part coarse sand or perlite. Ordinary potting compost on its own holds far too much water.

Ease the plant out of its nursery pot and tease the outer roots loose if they are circling. Set it so the top of the root ball sits level with the soil surface, backfill, and firm it gently. Planting it deeper than it was growing invites stem rot.

Water it in thoroughly, let it drain, and empty the saucer. Then put it in the brightest window you have and leave it alone until the top two inches of soil are dry.

Propagating from cuttings

Take cuttings in late spring or early summer from soft, non-flowering shoots.

Cut a three- to four-inch length just below a leaf node. Strip the leaves from the lower two inches, leaving four or five at the top. A cutting with leaves buried in the compost will rot before it roots.

Rooting hormone is optional and improves the strike rate. Dip ‘N Grow is a liquid concentrate that keeps better than the powders.

Push the cutting into a small pot of damp, gritty mix, firm around it, and cover the pot with a clear bag held off the leaves by a couple of sticks. Lavender cuttings need humidity to root and rot if the bag touches the foliage.

Keep them in bright, indirect light rather than full sun, which will cook them inside the bag. Vent the bag for a few minutes every couple of days.

Roots take four to six weeks. Tug gently: resistance means it has taken. Pot on once roots show at the drainage hole.

Growing from seed

Sow in late winter for plants that will be a decent size by autumn.

Chill the seed first. Two to four weeks in a sealed bag of damp vermiculite in the fridge substantially improves and evens out germination.

Sow on the surface of a seed-starting mix and cover with no more than an eighth of an inch, since lavender seed needs light to germinate. Mist rather than pour, and keep the mix damp but never saturated.

Germination takes two to four weeks at 65–75°F and is uneven, so do not throw the tray out early. A heat mat helps.

Once seedlings have two sets of true leaves, move them into individual pots and start hardening them into stronger light. Expect flowers in the second year.

Light

Lavender needs six to eight hours of direct sun, and this is the requirement most indoor growers cannot meet.

A south-facing window is the only orientation that reliably delivers it, and even then winter days fall short in most of the US. An east or west window gives roughly half what the plant wants.

The symptoms of too little light are specific: long bare stretches of stem between leaves, pale foliage, growth leaning hard toward the glass, and no flowers. Rotating the pot a quarter turn every few days fixes the leaning and nothing else.

A full-spectrum LED hung 6 to 12 inches above the plant for 12 to 14 hours a day makes up the difference through winter. Our indoor lighting guide covers what to buy.

Water

Water thoroughly, then let the top two inches of soil dry completely before watering again. In practice that is every week or two in summer and considerably less in winter.

Water the soil, not the plant. Wet foliage in still indoor air invites the fungal problems lavender is already prone to.

Empty the saucer every time. Lavender left standing in water will rot, and by the time the symptoms appear, wilting foliage on a plant with wet soil, the roots are usually already gone.

Underwatering is the more recoverable mistake. A dry, slightly wilted lavender revives within hours. An overwatered one often does not revive at all.

Temperature and humidity

Ordinary room temperature suits it: 60–80°F through the growing season, and cooler in winter if you can manage it. Below 50°F it stops growing. Keep it away from radiators and heating vents, which dry it out unevenly, and off a cold windowsill on frosty nights.

Humidity is the underrated problem. Lavender wants 30–50%, and a humid kitchen or bathroom will give it grey mold and root problems regardless of how carefully you water. Air movement matters more than a dehumidifier for most people. Leave space around the pot instead of crowding it against other plants, and run a small fan nearby if the room is still.

Soil and pH

Beyond drainage, lavender wants a slightly alkaline soil, around pH 7.0 to 7.5. Most potting composts are formulated slightly acidic, at 5.5 to 6.5, and lavender in acidic soil takes up nutrients poorly and slowly weakens.

A tablespoon of garden lime mixed through the pot at planting brings it into range and lasts a season or two. Crushed eggshells are the slower alternative and take months to have any effect, since the calcium carbonate has to break down first.

Test rather than guess if the plant is struggling for no obvious reason. Our guide to testing soil pH covers four methods, and a cheap probe is enough for this.

Repot every two or three years into fresh mix. Potting soil compacts over time and drainage gets worse exactly as the plant gets larger and more vulnerable.

Next steps

Once the plant is established, caring for indoor lavender covers pruning, feeding and the two-a-year cutback that stops it going woody.

When you are ready to harvest, how to use lavender covers drying, cooking and infusions.

References

1. University of Maryland Extension, “Lavender.” https://extension.umd.edu/resource/lavender ↩︎

2. Michigan State University Extension, “Lavender: a beautiful and useful herb.” https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/lavender_a_beautiful_and_useful_herb ↩︎