How to Grow Rosemary from Cuttings

Rosemary is one of the easiest herbs to propagate, and once you have done it once you will never need to buy a plant again. A single established bush will give you all the cuttings you could want, and each one costs you nothing but a bit of compost and a sunny windowsill. It is genuinely hard to think of a cheaper way to fill a border, edge a path or build up a row of pots.

The method is simple: snip a healthy shoot, strip the lower leaves, push it into gritty compost (or even a glass of water), and wait. Most cuttings root in four to eight weeks. If you have read our main guide to growing rosemary, this is the natural next step — it lets you turn that first hard-won plant into a steady supply for years to come.

When to take cuttings

You can take rosemary cuttings across a long stretch of the UK growing year, and the type of cutting simply changes with the season.

Softwood cuttings (late spring and early summer). From around May to July, rosemary puts on fresh, soft, bright-green growth. These pliable young shoots root the fastest — often within four to six weeks — because the plant is in full growth mode. This is the best window for a beginner, as the warmth and long days are on your side.

Semi-ripe cuttings (late summer). From late July into September, this year's growth has firmed up and turned woodier at the base while the tip is still soft. These semi-ripe shoots root a little more slowly but are more forgiving if you forget to water, and they give you young plants to nurse through their first winter indoors.

You can take hardwood cuttings in autumn too, but they are slower and less reliable on a windowsill, so stick to spring and late summer while you are learning.

Taking the cutting

Choose a healthy, vigorous parent plant and take your cuttings in the morning, when the shoots are full of water rather than wilting in afternoon heat.

1. Pick non-flowering shoots. Look for this year's growth — strong, leafy side shoots that are not carrying flower buds. A shoot trying to flower is putting its energy into blooms, not roots.
2. Cut 8–10cm lengths. Snip just below a leaf joint (the slightly swollen point where leaves emerge), using clean, sharp scissors or secateurs. The leaf joint is where roots form most readily.
3. Strip the lower leaves. Gently pull or pinch off the leaves from the bottom 3–4cm of the stem, leaving a bare length to push into the compost. Keep the top cluster of leaves intact — that is the plant's engine.
4. Take a few extras. Not every cutting takes, so prepare six to eight at a time. With rosemary you can reasonably expect most of them to root.

Rooting it

Now to encourage those bare stems to grow roots. There are two reliable routes, and both work well on a UK windowsill.

Method 1: gritty compost

This is the traditional approach and gives the strongest young plants.

• Fill a small pot or module tray with a free-draining mix — peat-free multipurpose compost cut roughly half-and-half with horticultural grit, perlite or sharp sand. Rosemary hates sitting wet, so drainage matters more than richness.
• Make a hole with a pencil or dibber and push each cutting in so the bare, stripped section is buried and the leafy top sits clear of the surface. Firm the compost gently around it.
• Water once to settle the compost, then keep it just barely moist — never soggy.

Method 2: a glass of water

The simplest method of all, and a lovely one to do with children — see our tips on getting kids growing. Stand the prepared cuttings in a glass of water on a bright sill, with the bare stem submerged and the leaves above the waterline. Change the water every few days. You will see fine white roots appear within a few weeks. Once they are a couple of centimetres long, pot the cutting up into the gritty mix above so it can build a proper root system before going outside.

To hold in humidity and stop the cuttings drying out before they can drink, cover the pot loosely with a clear plastic bag (held off the leaves with a couple of short sticks) or use a propagator lid. Lift the cover every few days to let fresh air in and wipe away condensation, which keeps mould at bay. Once you see new growth at the tips, the cuttings are rooting and you can take the cover off for good.

A gentle tug is the best test. After four to eight weeks, give a cutting the lightest pull — if it resists, roots have formed. If it slides out, slip it back and give it another fortnight.

Potting on and hardening off

Once your cuttings have a healthy set of roots and are pushing out fresh leaves, it is time to move them up in the world.

Pot each rooted cutting individually into a 9cm pot of free-draining compost (again, multipurpose mixed with grit). Water it in, then keep it somewhere bright and sheltered while it settles. Let it fill that pot with roots and put on some sturdy top growth before you think about planting it outdoors — a young rosemary needs a bit of substance before it can cope with the open garden.

Before any plant raised indoors goes outside, it needs hardening off — a week or two of gradually acclimatising it to outdoor conditions. Stand the pots outside in a sheltered, partly shaded spot during the day and bring them back in at night, lengthening the time outdoors a little each day. This toughens the soft, sheltered growth so it does not get scorched by sun or knocked back by wind and cold.

Plant out in spring or early summer into a sunny, well-drained spot. Rosemary thrives in poor, gritty soil and full sun — exactly the conditions covered in our Mediterranean herbs guide — so resist the urge to plant it in rich, damp ground where it will sulk.

Why grow your own

Once you can root rosemary at will, a whole set of cheap and cheerful possibilities opens up.

A low hedge or border edging for free. Rosemary makes a lovely informal low hedge or path edge. Buying enough plants for a run would cost a small fortune, but a dozen cuttings from one bush cost nothing. As a bonus, the flowers are loved by bees — pair it with other pollinator plants to keep your garden buzzing.

Ready replacements. Rosemary is long-lived but not immortal — a harsh, wet winter can see off even a mature bush, and plants grow leggy and bare-stemmed with age. Keeping a couple of young cuttings coming along each year means you always have a replacement waiting, with no gap in your supply for the kitchen.

Gifts and swaps. A potted-up rosemary cutting is a genuinely welcome present, and a great way to start swapping plants with neighbours and friends. It is one of the most satisfying things in growing your own — giving away living plants you raised from a single snip.

If you are just finding your feet with herbs, rosemary cuttings are a brilliant confidence-builder: quick, forgiving, and almost free. From here you might branch out into other reliable, beginner-friendly herbs — take a look at the herbs hub for the rest, or our roundup of the easiest crops for beginners to keep the momentum going. And whenever you need a refresher on caring for the parent plant, the rosemary guide has you covered.