My lavender is brown and sad looking after winter frost. Can I revive it?

I put down a lavender border last summer on my driveway. Unfortunately, it looks like the winter frost damaged some of the plants. They are quite brown and sad looking compared with the others. Will they come back or should I cut my losses? GL, Co Kildare

Fast-growing and fragrant, lavender is the most quintessential of summer flowers, conjuring up images of scented lavender fields and garden picnics. But the problem is that this sun-loving, evergreen, naturally rather short-lived, shrubby perennial really isn’t a fan of our cool, damp Irish climate, especially if it’s unfortunate enough to be planted into shade and/or any kind of soil that’s less than free-draining. Climate change has made things even more challenging, resulting in summer deluges and winter waterlogging of soils. Rather than cold weather, it’s the latter in particular that spells death for lavender.

As regards your sad-looking, probably-dead lavender plants, you could try digging them up and transplanting them temporarily elsewhere in the garden or into pots on the chance that they might recover. But it will be a slow business and I think that on balance it’s not worth it. So my suggestion is to bin them and then take a close look at the growing conditions to see if these need to be improved.

If your lavender hedge is planted in shade, then unfortunately you’ll need to relocate it elsewhere. Even if it’s growing in full sun, is the soil heavy, wet, and/or compacted and inclined to winter waterlogging? If so, you’ll need to improve it integrating plenty of coarse horticultural grit and even some fine pebble. Another alternative is to create a slightly raised bed by gently mounding up the soil. As little as 15cm can make all the difference to the plants’