I don't know! I read your account and I can't figure it out... I live where it's VERY hot and dry... and I'd neglect it, meaning that sometimes when the temps were around 100º it wouldn't get water very often... and it survived and grew. My winters regularly were in the 30's and my LV was in the ground and did fine, though dying back some, which is great, kept it not so huge.
I am thinking maybe it's what you have it potted in???

I'm willing to bet you didn't actually kill your lemon verbena plants, just watched the leaves die off. There's a difference.

My lemon verbena hasn't had a decent drink for several months, and I live in the subtropics where the heat is fierce. We're in the middle of the worst drought in recorded history, and we aren't allowed to water our gardens even with buckets, at the moment. The only water my garden gets now is the occasional light shower of rain that falls maybe once a month. Barely enough to settle the dust. The soil is as dry as powder.

My lemon verbena is powering along!!

Second. Lemon verbena is deciduous, and the leaves will fall off in winter, even here where we get very mild winters. I just chop the lemon verbena down to ground level, and it comes back every spring no problems at all. The plant looks as dead as a dodo, but it still comes back.

I have pulled out a lemon verbena plant and forgotten about it for about a week, and left it lying in full sun on concrete, where it has been thoroughly cooked. I've planted it, and it has grown back like new.

I suggest that you reduce the watering in general. When you first plant it, give it a good deep drink, then don't worry about it too much after that. If you mulch around the plant, that will help. Don't allow the mulch to touch the stem however.

I think you might be confusing 'dead' with 'dormant'.

I have the heat Verbena wants, but it certainly doesn't get a lot of water here. This winter's cold put my two back, but I'm seeing some new green leaves.

When I take my plants in for the winter, they're in a 60 degree environment with 18 hours of grow light a day. I'm not sure why it would decide halfway through that that it's winter and do the deciduous thing, especially if the triggers are temperature or length of days.

Maybe I have been throwing out dormant plants after all, though. I can't say I've ever had a dormant potted plant. What kind of living requirements do they have? To assure that the soil issue isn't a problem, what kind of soil mix would you recommend?

Plants have their own body clocks just like humans. If it's time to sleep, then they'll sleep! You don't need to do anything special with a deciduous plant. In fact, almost all plants have a dormancy period. Some just make it more obvious than others. Even here in our very mild winters, most plants don't do any growing over winter, and many look a bit 'owsyafather, like the mints for instance. That's dormancy.

Now, when you're asleep, how much eating and drinking do you do? Not a lot, I reckon. Same with plants. When dormant, they do not need feeding (fertilising), and if in pots they need just the barest minimum of water to prevent the soil from drying out - the plant won't actually drink at all until it's awake again.

Often, when a plant is ready to become dormant, you can forcibly keep it awake for a bit longer. Eventually, however, prolonged enforced sleeplessness will cause it to become one very sick plant. As with humans. When using grow lights, you need to simulate the conditions outside. 18 hours of light per day is a long time, isn't it? Let it go to sleep overnight, eh?

You can control Nature only to some extent. Eventually Nature will win any battles we humans inflict on it.

Well, I've been successful at killing Lemon Verbena several times. Its Lemon Balm that I find indestructible.

My lemon verbenas always look dead as doornails over the winter. The only time I haven't had them come back in the spring was when we had 38" of rain one winter instead of the normal 14". The poor things drowned. I would definitely keep the watering to a minimum.

Good luck.
Provence

I have had a LV for about a year. It has never looked what anyone would call healthy. It has been green but not ever gotten lush. It also looks pretty scraggly. Can I just cut it back and start over so to speak? Also it is in a pot, is that a problem? Should it be in the ground? I live in an apartment so the ground is not really an option. Did I get the wrong sort of plant? Thanks!

Lemon verbena IS a straggly sort of plant, never looks lush and leafy as you'd imagine it should be, but rather spindly and bare at times. Chop it right back once it loses its leaves, and it will come back in spring - looking just as straggly as ever!

I have killed lemon verbena too many times to count. My weather is like Daisy's. I've tried potting it, putting it in different areas of the garden, more or less sun, you name it. A perpetual optimist, I tried again this year in yet another location. Ask me how my lemon verbena is? Well, it hasn't died yet. This is a very good sign. Still green, still has leaves. On the other hand, this is also the first year that my lobelia hasn't died in my arms, after maybe 10 attempts. The allysums died a week after planting (slugs, probably), the replanted sage looks dead but maybe that's just a disguise, and the moonbeam coeopsis also so far hasn't kicked the bucket, this is maybe the 5-6 time trying, so who knows! I just go out and hope for the best, getting smarter every year (hopefully). Batya

This spring my poor LV looked so dead that I was just going to throw it out. It sat in a pot on my deck getting no rain or no sun until this spring. I decided to water it (just in case) and to my shock - leaves are forming all over that dried out stem. It's back!! Thanks for all the comments, now I know that it was just sleeping. Thank God!

I don't know where you live, but here in California I've never lost one of these plants.... either in the ground or potted. Where the idea came from that they don't need water is beyond my comprehension. I drench-water my potted Lemon Verbena several times a week because it's very hot, dry air and no rain for the whole of summer. I also fertilize it regularily. When I had one in the ground it was anything but stragly. I discovered that the faucet nearby had developed a leak and the ground was always moist in that area. The Lemon Verbena loved it and flourished. I truly think the poster-from-the-past, with their tablespoon of water a week, killed the plant from lack of water.