Growing Lovage: A Complete Profile

By Growing Home Greens Team · August 10, 2026

Lovage tastes like celery turned up several notches, and it grows like it means it: a single plant can reach 6 feet tall and just as wide once established, which is a strange thing to learn about an herb most people have never grown. One plant is enough for a household that uses it in stocks, soups, and salads.

Starting it, and giving it room

Start seed indoors about 7 weeks before your last frost, sown 1/4 inch deep, and set transplants out about a week after that date. Germination takes 10 to 14 days. Give it real space at 18 to 24 inches between plants; a mature lovage plant is closer in scale to a small shrub than a kitchen herb.

It’s hardy in zones 4-8, dying back to the ground each winter and returning reliably in spring, often among the first things up in the herb bed. A light harvest is fine the first year; by the second, whole branches can be cut without setting the plant back.

Using more leaf than you’d think

Lovage’s flavor is concentrated enough that a few leaves go as far as a whole bunch of celery. Use it in stocks and soups the way you’d use a bay leaf, added early and pulled or strained out, or chop small amounts fresh into salads. The hollow stems can be used as flavorful straws for savory drinks, and the seeds work like celery seed in pickling and bread.

A perennial that doesn’t need replacing

Because lovage comes back on its own, it doesn’t belong in an annual bed rotation. Give it a permanent spot, ideally somewhere with a little afternoon shade in hot climates, since it prefers moist, fertile soil and can scorch in full, dry summer sun.

Lovage has no well-established companion pairings, and nothing it needs to be kept away from. Its size means it needs a dedicated corner in the Garden Designer rather than being tucked between smaller herbs.

Source: Lovage: Key Growing Information, Johnny’s Selected Seeds.

Companion planting guide for Lovage · Find your planting dates

Typically viable in USDA zones 4-8. Not sure your zone? Look it up by ZIP code.

Mature height: 4-6.5 ft

Method: Start indoors: Start indoors from seed, then transplant outside. It needs a head start most zones can't give it by direct-sowing alone.

When to plant lovage, by zone

Every zone lovage grows in. Pick your zone in the header and it will be highlighted here. Each zone links to its full page.

See exact start-indoors, direct-sow, and harvest dates for your zone →

How many Lovage plants fit per square foot?

Spacing: 1 per square foot (square-foot-gardening spacing). Mature height: 4-6.5 ft.

Varieties worth considering

• Straight-species lovage (Levisticum officinale): Johnny's Selected Seeds sells it as the plain species; there's no real named-cultivar market to speak of. What matters more than variety is knowing it's the same plant whether you buy seed or a nursery division, and that one established plant is usually plenty. (source)

Why each variety is listed comes from the source shown next to it. We haven't grown these ourselves yet, so treat this as a research-backed starting point, not a personal endorsement. The buy links are separate from those sources: they go to seed suppliers that sell that exact variety, and we may earn a commission on some of them.

Where to buy lovage seeds

True Leaf Market (each supplier's lovage seeds)

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See it growing

Search YouTube for "growing lovage" videos → (a live search, not a hand-picked video; results vary and aren't vetted by us)

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Growing Lovage: A giant celery relative that comes back every spring for years, when one plant already makes more celery flavor than most kitchens use.

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