I’m trying to grow all my own herbs and flowers for using in my soaps, everything I’ve planted is growing like crazy apart from my lavender plants. I started with 10 plugs 5 in the ground and 5 in pots. I now only have one left in the ground and although the ones in pots are alive they don’t seem to be growing. Can anyone tell me what I might be missing? All my roses and other flowers are doing really well and my rosemary has gone crazy this spring.
Treat them mean, they prefer poor soil, drier conditions and lots of sun.
Well I have plenty of poor soil lol It’s all clay here although I am trying to improve it with compost and topsoil. Hopefully all I need is a bit of sun then and I’ll try watering the ones in pot less 
Clay soil is good at holding nutrients, next time you plant any in the soil add some gravel to the bottom of the planting hole, this will help with drainage.
Thank you, I’ll try that. I love gardening but know very little about it 
Although I seem to be having some luck with just planting things and hoping for the best lol
oh thanks for the tips @littleRamstudio I also failed to grow Lavender and I also know very little about gardening and just hope for the best
I think it’s great you @ShropshireNaturalProducts are growing your own herbs and flowers for your products
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@Fatema thank you. I’m trying to make it so all my ingredients are all local so I can trace where everything has come from. Once I’ve got my garden established, I’d like to invest in a bee hive so I can grow my own honey too
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I’m over run with lavender but then I have a sandy loam soil. So it is well drained.
Lavender doesn’t really like clay soil it prefers well drained soil in a nice sunday position.
It still likes to be watered but needs that drainage. Your clay soil holds too much water and can rot the roots.
I’ve got clay in my garden. I have one large lavender plant that’s next to a path that’s planted straight into the clay, but I’m guessing it’s roots are under the path in the dryer bit. I also have some French lavender in pots. Pots are great because you can make up the soil to suit the plant.
Tip for the day, anything with silvery foliage like lavender tends to come from hot, dry places, so won’t like to sit in wet soil. Gardening is a lot easier when you know what country your plants come from originally. That way you can stick them where they’ll get the right amount of sun, or shade, and you’ll know what soil they’ll like too.
Jo
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I’ll try some gravel as suggested by @littleRamstudio and would it help if I dug some silver sand into the soil just to help it drain a bit?
I’d be inclined not to use sand in clay. The only reason is clay particles are quite small and so is the sand, so I could see the sand just getting washed through the clay. The best things are compost and manure because they’ll change the structure of the clay by diluting it a bit and preventing it clumping, so it’ll open the soil up and help drainage.
Thank you @JoSara I have been digging compost and manure and believe it or not sea weed carted to shrewsbury from Anglesey as my grandmother swears by it for roses lol Still it’s a good excuse to go to the beach from time to time, it’s the only thing I miss since moving to shropshire
Donna
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Hi
I’m growing lavender this year for the first time. Its doing well.
I planted from seed in my little green house, and repotted them a couple of weekends back when a couple of leaves had sprouted from the stems.
My other half gives them ocassional sprays of plant food, and water.
Fingers crossed they flourish and do well in the garden.
Karen 
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@karenscraftybitz I’ll keep my fingers crossed for your little plants. I didn’t realise how hard it was to grow as you see it all over Shrewsbury!
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I’ve got dreadful soil!- full of stones and not much else but lavender grows well. I’m by no means an expert but the gravel sounds like the way to go 
I have some pea gravel lying around, if it ever stops raining I’ll dig up the plants and pop some gravel in the holes. I really am a fair weather gardener lol
Your outdoor lavenders may have suffered with the wet weather. We lost all but one of our lavenders over the winter. They basically just rotted away at the roots, with all the wet and soggy weather.
We also have clay soil… Lavender is naturally a sandy/gritty soil plant - it comes from the Mediterranean and grows in drier, more sandy conditions than we generally have here.
We rescued one sad lavender plant from our seven beauties and have dug a lot of improvers into our soil, then planted a selection of stuff. We transplanted the lavender and also my pot-bound rosemary, but we put a lot of gritty stuff in the holes when we planted those. Fingers crossed!
Good luck with yours… plant them with a mixture of “John Innes No.2” compost, garden grit and soil - perhaps that will help them with drainage.
Lizzie
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Thank you @LizzieMade I’ll keep my fingers crossed for your lavenders, let me know if it works.
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Lavender does not like sitting with it’s feet in water. Mix some gravel or perlite in with some John Innes seed and potting compost and don’t over water. Where I live in suburban London is where lavender was originally grown for Yardley, our soil is chalky and dry. we have 2 lavender fields near us.
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Ooh so jealous of @Coloursandtextures having lavender field nearby, I would love that, but now thanks to this thread, next year I am going to look out at homegrown lavender plants in pots ( I hope )
Thanks everyone who has given growing tips so useful for a clueless like me.