How are your plants doing?

Sleeper, here's my experience with lavender and rosemary in St Louis.

Indoors they do not do well, get spindly and mildewed. The worst part is they seem to make it thru the winter and then succumb to mildew in late winter when it's too cold to put them out, but your hopes were high. This happened several years in a row.

Outdoors lavender does well here (we get down to -3F for a few days most years). We may be a bit warmer than you-- this has been zone 6 winters most years recently.

Needs the hottest sun you have to make beautiful blooms and scent. Check out somewhere like High Country Gardens for some types hardy to zone 5. Make sure they are not wet in winter.

Rosemary I had luck with for 3 or four years planted under the eaves (shelter from rain in winter) and against the house wall for warmth. This was a cold hardy type and got very large. A re-landscaping project tore it out, and I haven't been able to replace it.

Two years ago I bought a cold-hardy type from High Country Gardens and planted it out in the open. It did all right the first winter, but I think it died this (very nasty cold) winter. HCG has two cold-hardy types (they're in Colorado). These should do okay in normal zone 5 winters, especially if you can replicate the up against the house trick that worked so well for me. You might have to replace each time there's a really nasty winter.

Rosemary have to be dry in winter.

Good luck.

Hi s10sleeper,

I've had good luck with a rosemary plant in a pot, trained to be a standard. I bring it in in the fall and park it on my sunny south kitchen window. It gets a little leggy in the winter, reaching for the light, but I just prune it in the spring when I set it out (and save the clippings for cooking). It's going on 3 years now and is a pretty potted plant, kind of bonsai-like.