Our front garden will eventually be filled with lots of perennial plants - the ones that stick around year on year and give structure to a space, like the lavender I have been jamming in wherever possible.
These lovely floral shrubs grow relatively without any help and need little or no feeding and only really want for a bit of airy sunshine, they provide flowers for bees to forage in for weeks and weeks, provide a great, subtle 'grey-green' foliage colour that blends with our pink house well and they smell lovely too.
I really have no idea about lavender varieties, and have planted a few. We have inherited some very gangly and previously uncared-for 'grosso' lavenders, which have remained, even with their contorted shapes, as their scent is truly heavenly and I can't bear to part with their strange, leggy, woody, mishapen forms until I have replacements growing happily!
Looking up the etymology of the name, lavandula, it appears most likely to have come from the French, 'lavandre', which is turn came from the Latin 'lavere' - to wash - and lavender is certainly a commonly-used essential oil and scent in many items associated with washing and cleaning.
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