What’s not to love about lavender? Deliciously perfumed and vibrantly coloured, this member of the mint family has found its way into life — and death — for more than 3,000 years.
Egyptians used it in their mummification process. Romans lounged in lavender baths in the days when a pound of the blossoms was so prized, it cost a month’s wages.
Cleopatra is said to have seduced Julius Caesar and Mark Antony by dabbing a splash of the perfume on her wrists. And during her 16th century reign, England’s Queen Elizabeth insisted on lavender jam with her crumpets and tea.
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Pharmacists created essential oils for medicinal purposes by distilling plants as early as the 1500s. Recent scientific studies have confirmed lavender’s anti-inflammatory, antidepressant and sedative properties, which devotees have touted for years.
“There’s been growing interest in lavender for two decades,” says Conrad Richter, president of Richter’s Herbs, an Ontario-based, family-owned company that has supplied seeds and plugs to growers since 1968. “It hit a crescendo five or six years ago.” The 2021 Richter’s catalogue lists over 25 varieties of lavender.
Sieste Elsinga, owner of Fresa Flora Greenhouses in Beamsville, Ont., has also seen the uptick. “The demand has grown every year,” Elsinga says. He imports lavender cuttings from Ethiopia, Israel and Colombia, propagating the plants under one-acre of glass and selling to growers in several provinces and in New York State.
With the blossoming of this lavender craze, gardeners and farmers from coast to coast are discovering its many rewards. And its challenges.
“It does demand special care and attention,” says Dr. Sean Westerveld, the ginseng and herb specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA), who has written extensively about lavender cultivation for beginners and experienced growers.
The first question
The first question Westerveld asks a prospective grower never varies. “What is your soil like?” If the answer is heavy, soggy clay, his response couldn’t be more direct. “Don’t even give it a thought.”
To thrive, the plants require well-drained beds, specifically sandy or sandy loam or a slope, that allow water to drain away rapidly. These little beauties have an aversion to wet feet, preferring to bask in full sun. Year-round climate and winter cover also figure into their well-being.
For anyone thinking about growing lavender, Lee Anne Downey, president of the Ontario Lavender Association (OLA) says, “In addition to the number one soil requirement, other factors demand consideration.” The initial investment is substantial. Ditto the hand labour. The plants take two years to fully mature. With no wholesale markets currently in Canada, growers must create their own retail outlets.
Successful growers are all about celebrating local and creating their unique customer experience either on the farm or in creating a line of products. Growers say it can take as much as three to five years to turn a profit. Knowing the financial pitfalls is but one aspect of the education you need to grow lavender.
Downey’s know-how is based on personal experience. Four years ago, she and her husband Tom Hitchman fulfilled her long-held dream, moving from the city to a stone house in the country. Reading Lavender Fields of America inspired her to plunge into researching all things lavender, join the OLA and plant 2,500 plugs in 2017.
“Many members come to the association as novices like we were,” says Downey. “Our focus is on education programs for startup growers. OMAFRA’s Sean Westerveld works closely with members, providing as much information as possible so that newbies can move forward, making wise decisions.”
The OLA, established in 2010 to represent the interests of the province’s lavender growers, is Canada’s only lavender association. The 65 members are a mixed lot, farming plots that vary in size from small gardens with 200 plants to expansive fields on which 26,000 plants bloom and grow. Westerveld estimates there are about 200 acres of lavender grown in Ontario and 500 acres across the country. The Ontario industry is too small, and, without a national association, sales data are not available.
Lavender seldom represents a Canadian grower’s only source of income. Established farmers recognize an opportunity to diversify. Some couples retire to the country, eager for a new learning experience. Others with mortgage-paying primary jobs consider it a trendy hobby. And of course, there are the romantic types who have been seduced by “the soul of Provence,” captivated by rolling fields of voluptuous colour but blissfully naïve about the hard, dirt-beneath-your-fingernails work required to recreate what they have seen in the south of France.
A family trip to France inspired sisters Emma Greasley and Jessica Ridding to take the plunge. They grew up on a scenic country property in the rolling hills surrounding Creemore, Ont. Marketing and public relations jobs took them to Toronto and the inevitable corporate grind. But on weekends, they would return to their “happy place,” dreaming of creating a beautiful flower farm that could be shared with others. After extensive reading and research, turning to the OLA and with the support of all family members, they dove in.
“The initial investment was huge,” Greasley said. “Purchasing 3,000 plugs at $2.50 each was just the start.”
To launch Purple Hill Lavender Farm, they invited their friends to a planting party, starting with a one-acre field. Since then, they have planted two more acres, hired additional summer help and transformed a small horse barn into an on-site retail store. Their products are also available at Heirloom 42 in Creemore. The farm is open to the public Fridays to Mondays for a $10 fee, part of which is donated to the local hospital.
“The most fun,” Greasley said, “is the feedback we get from visitors who come to enjoy what’s here.”
When Alison and Christopher Marks decided to move from corporate life in the city, lavender lured them to a five-acre property in the Victorian village of Knowlton, an hour east of Montreal. The aha! moment for Alison came with a visit to Bleu Lavande, a 45-acre lavender farm in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, the first operation to successfully grow lavender in the area.
The business capital
“I was knocked off my feet by the extraordinary beauty of the fragrant purple hills,” Alison Marks says. In 2007, just two years after her visit to Bleu Lavande, their Joie de Lavande opened for business.
In the interim, she and Christopher met with farmers in Sequim, Washington, often called “the lavender capital of North America,” who provided the business model for the couple to move forward. When they realized that it takes 400 kilograms of flowers to produce one litre of essential oil, they chose to import the oil and products from growers in Sequim, rather than distilling and manufacturing their own.
Because the couple don’t need to harvest in July, visitors can come for a lavender experience from June to mid-October. “This allows us to have a right-size-for-us business,” Christopher said. They come to see, touch, smell and taste whether it’s wandering the pathways, picnicking by a spring-fed pond or shopping the boutique for all things lavender. They can lounge on the terrace, enjoying lavender lemonade or lavender ice cream.
“We want the farm to reflect the herb’s reputation,” Alison says, “to be a beautiful, calming, place where you feel relaxed and refreshed.”
For full-time farmers, adding lavender appeals to some looking to diversify. Adding an agritourism element, distilling the plant to create essential oil to make products to sell at the farm, at local markets or online adds to the farm’s individuality and offers an additional source of income.
On the farm
Jan and Howard Schooley, third-generation apple farmers and owners of Schooley Orchards in Norfolk County, Ont., became interested in lavender in 2006 when the Ontario government was looking for alternative crops for area tobacco farmers. Jan Schooley planted a patch behind the house and quickly fell in love with the scent and the colour. The next step was to remove a 3.5-acre apple orchard, replanting it with several varieties of lavender. “Apple Hill Lavender Farm was a very pleasant way to diversify,” she says.
About 14,000 plants now grow in two separate fields — one behind the barn for commercial production and the other accessible to visitors who are invited to bring a chair to sit back and soak up the view, pick their own bouquets, and shop the boutique. People will drive for two hours to come to relax, unwind and be swept away by the extraordinary beauty of it all.
In 2004 the Schooley’s daughter Melissa and her husband, Dan Caron, joined the operation which allowed the elder generation to turn over the lavender operation and retail shop to the younger couple.
“We got in on the ground floor of the agritourism movement,” Melissa says, who has a growing interest in medicinal plants. She recently enrolled in the medicinal plants certificate program at Cornell University in New York and plans to use her new-found knowledge to formulate plant-based health products for their retail store, where her Raging Bowl Pottery creations are for sale.
Andrea and David McFadden and their son and daughter are third- and fourth-generation farmers at their beautiful Kelowna, B.C. location, now known as The Okanagan Lavender and Herb Farm. The parents started growing lavender in 1994 on a quarter-acre test block alongside apples, then grapes. They decided 13 years ago to specialize, going fully into the production of 20 kinds of aromatic plants, including roses which they distill into rosewater.
“Everything we grow becomes an ingredient in the products we make,” says Andrea McFadden. “The joy for me is the distillation and creating 60 beauty, culinary and aromatherapy products, by hand and in small batches.”
The distilling process has been compared to steaming vegetables. Passing steam through the flowers and as little stem as possible in a still, (preferably a costly copper one) vaporizes the oil that, when cooled becomes a clear, gold liquid. The amount of lavender required to produce essential oil explains the price of the real stuff compared to the commercially made scent available on the internet.
Canadian gardeners and farmers are proving you don’t have to visit the south of France to enjoy the sweet scent and subtle beauty of this beloved old-world plant. In today’s stressed out world, lovely lavender remains a balm to delight all our senses.
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