The Eponymous Garden Rides Again!

The green industries embrace many careers and companies that could be described as “a hobby that got out of hand.” You may know – or be – one of those ex-hobbyists.

One such entity gave the world a popular herb: Lavandula ‘Otto Quast’. Let’s meet its namesake.

Born in 1924 in Hamburg, Germany, Otto Quast emigrated to California. He worked as a shipyard carpenter and dabbled in gardening. When an accident ended his woodworking career, he turned his pastime into a fulltime business. Late in his career he said, “If I’d known then what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have done it.”

Here’s to blissful ignorance! We’re glad he did it. Otto introduced numerous new plants, but his best-known contribution to horticulture is his eponymous lavender. 

Lavandula stoechas ‘Otto Quast’ 

The trademark flower of the species is vaguely pineapple-shaped, if you can picture a purple pineapple. ‘Otto Quast’ features fat, dark-purple bracts, topped by a cluster of whimsical, winglike petals of paler lavender for a pleasing bicolor effect.

Spanish lavender, as L. stoechas is known, has an endearingly tidy habit with a creepy name: It “buries its dead,” i.e., the spent first flush of flowers is hidden by new foliage as a second bloom forms. Like other lavender species, it’s a Mediterranean native. Butterflies love it. Rabbits and deer don’t. 

Hardy in Zones 7 – 9, it stands 24 – 30” tall.

The Game of the Name 

stoechas is Greek for “in rows,” a reference to the neatly queued tiny florets that make up the fat purple “pineapple.” It can be pronounced “stow-EEK-us,” or “STEEK-us.” Or you can just say Spanish lavender. We don’t judge.

Finish the journey: From Germany to California to your bench to America’s gardens and patio pots. ‘Otto Quast’ comes to you in fast-finishing 72-cell liners from Emerald Coast Growers – your easy choice!