'Goldberg'
Variegated Lavender
or Goldberg Lavandin
"Down gust-sweet walks,
bordered by lavender,
While eastward, westward,
the mad swallows whir."
-Lizette Woodworth Reese
(1856-1935)
(1856-1935)
This variegated lavender is sometimes sold as L. angustifolia 'Goldberg,' & elsetimes acknowledged as a hybrid, L. x intermedia 'Goldberg.' L. x intermedia is alternatively listed as L. hybrida & L. hortensis, & commonly distinguished from non-hybrid lavenders by the common name lavandin.
Botanically speaking, lavandin originated as a natural cross between L. angustifolia & L. latifolia.
In the 1920s Lavendin began to be bred & cloned for heightened production of essential oils, for the sake of the perfume industry of Provence. The most common variety for crop use today is the large, loosely mounding 'Grosso.'
Such good oil production meant the whole plant has an astoundingly good aroma, so it was bound to become just as important ornamentally, with increasing numbers of cultivars, many more focused on their ornamental beauty.
'Goldberg' is a striking evergreen perennial with fragrant variegated foliage of creamy yellow & grey-blue, with its lavender-blue summer flower spikes rising quite high above the compact subshrub.
Its growth rate is slower than most lavenders. The foliage grows to around eighteen inches tall & wide, slowly spreading wider, but adding in the height of the unusually length flower stems, a mature clump can be two feet tall or taller. The flowers draw butterflies & honeybees.
After its blooms are fading away late in the year, the subshrub ought to be sheered to shape, to keep it compact. Sheering at least the fading flower stems, & up to a third of the length of the leaves, insures flowery bushiness for the following year.