In article , Ann Burlingham wrote:

"sue and dave" writes:

I'd encourage you to scale back your expectations for an 8'x16' lavender bed
and look to a container situation for lavender, maybe 6-8 plants nursery
grown to transplant stage.

I'm in the very same USDA Zone 5B, adjacent to the Androscoggin River in
Western Maine

If its lavender you want, for scent, for packaging, or for sale in any way,
you ( and I) just don't live in the right part of this world to have it as
a perennial.

I'm surprised to read this, as I'm in zone 5 (a or b I'm not really
sure - sort of on the cusp, so far as I can tell) and the lavender
plant my great uncle from Olean, NY (zone 4b or 5a by the map I see)
gave me from my garden in the early 1970s throve for years. When I did
notice it dying back after 15-20 years, I grew a new plant by rooting
a cutting, and that plant is now doing pretty well itself. Maybe I've
just been lucky?

To the original poster: how about buying a few plants and growing more
from cuttings, if seeds turn out to be a pain?

Yes you did get "lucky" but only in terms of scoring a cold-hardy
cultivar. Not all but a great many spike lavender cultivars (Lavendula
angustifolia & Lavandula x intermedia) do just fine in zone 5. The
well-known & enormous 'Grosso' grows in zone 5, as do varieties of
'Hidcote' & so-called 'Munsteads' & many of the varieties developed in
England. Munstead has even been reported to overwinter with relative ease
in Zone 3 or 4 if heavily mulched (though much that is sold as 'Munstead'
isn't). I don't think Lavandula stoechas, the rabbit-ear lavenders, ever
thrives in zone 5.

Most of the more famously cold-hardy varieties tend to be cutting-grown,
but I'd think a percentage of seed-grown would retain the parent's
hardiness if it had been a cold-hardy parent to start with. Even if half
or more of seed-grown plants were wiped out by a good long freeze, what
survived would last for years.

Myself gardening in Zone 8 I don't have to worry about it. They all do
fine just so long as theyr'e never too wet.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com