Lavender Farm at the Royal Winter Fair

Since I was a child, the fall season is never complete without a trip to Toronto’s Royal Agricultural Winter Fair. I love looking at all the different breeds of cattle, the sheep and even the beautiful roosters and hens. The horse show is a must as the show jumping is wonderful.

Last Monday I helped at the booth of the Arabian Horse Association of Eastern Canada, answering questions about Arabian horses and even about how the Quarter Horse got it’s name!!

When my shift was over I had a chance to wander around and within a few minutes met Chris Marks, who with his wife owns Joie de Lavande, a small lavender farm south of Montreal, in the provence of Quebec. He had a booth at the Fair to promote his farm and their products and even managed to give Prince Charles’ wife, Camilla, a bottle of their lavender horse shampoo for her horse. We had a wonderful chat. He had not heard of my lavender book – (Growing Lavender, A Guide for Cooler Climates, the first book on growing lavender in Canada), and I had not heard of his farm!

It was interesting that we had both been to the Sequim Lavender Festival and to see lavender growing in Provence France. What a small lavender world.

I’ve started making more lavender pillows for the holidays – gifts for friends and to sell. I have some lovely dried rose petals and will do some rose pillows as well as rose-lavender pillows.

If you would like information about my book, please visit my website www.growing-lavender.com
At the moment the book is not available from Amazon.

Cleaning up the garden

After days of rain the weather today was dry and sunny, just perfect, for cleaning up the garden. I was very sad to find that two of my larger lavenders had died, but it was my own fault. Both were L. x intermedias and both were too crowded. I think the problem was two-fold. Other plants grew over them, cutting off their sun. I think the second problem had to do with where they were planted – with roses. The roses need more water than the lavender and we had a wet summer to begin with. I think they got too much water.

The L x intermedia ‘Grosso’ never really got started. It had been a gift and I didn’t give it enough space to start with but I know I can get another if I decide I want to make the space for it.
‘Grosso’ is a beautiful, winter hardy, lavender. It takes 3-4 years to fully mature and can reach nearly 30″ tall when not in bloom. It is spectacular in bloom, but needs the space you would give a shrub to really do it justice.

I have a terrible habit of collecting plants. I love watching plants up close and seeing how they grow. When I see something different at the nursery, I just can’t help myself, especially if it is a good price!

The other lavender I was very sorry to lose. It was L. x intermedia ‘Provence White’. I found it a few years ago at the local grocery store, which has a very good nursery in the spring and have never seen it anywhere else. These intermedias take 2-3 years to start blooming and summer 2008 it produced lots of flowers on long sturdy stems and I used quite a few to make lavender wands. I cut some this summer and made a few more, but today when I was cleaning up the garden all I found was a mass of dead sticks.

Oh well. It did inspire me to thin a few things out and hopefully I won’t lose any more.

Lavender still in bloom

Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada and the fall weather has arrived but I have one lavender plant in the garden, still blooming. It is a two year old plant and according to the label it is L. angustifolia Sarah.

I’ve seen lavender blooming elsewhere in my neighbourhood as well. In fact the local funeral home has two beautiful plants still in full bloom. One is a smaller L. angustifolia while the other is a larger plant and I think it might be L. X intermedia Provence. I have often had angustifolias in bloom this late, but you don’t usually see an intermedia blooming this time of year.

Yesterday I went to the Toronto Bonsai Show and Sale at the Toronto Botanical gardens. Members bring in their plants to exhibit. They were wonderful and I’m sorry I did not take photos to share here. They had members giving demonstrations of how they wire and train their plants. I think we’re going to go to a meeting.

Some lavender plants can be trained to grow as topiaries.
The most common one I have seen is Lavandula dentata.
It is not winter hardy, but has lovely grey, indented leaves.

I have never had the patience to train one. The one shown here is about 4 feet high and was grown at Humber Nurseries north of Toronto.

If you are going to be visiting the Toronto area and want to find garden related events, check out this website:
www.gardentoronto.ca.
Mark keeps track of what’s happening so it is easy to find an event to attend.

If you like reading garden blogs, he has a list of all the Canadian ones at: Gardenwriters.ca

Pruning your lavender
October is a bit late for pruning now. Leave the plants until next spring.

All for now.

A Lavender Queen

Here in southern Ontario, snow blankets my lavender in the garden and one lone L. angustifolia ‘Munstead’ is struggling along in the house. I purchased it early this year, with nearly 10 other lavenders, and it did not make it into the garden. Not sure if it would survive in its pot through the winter, I decided to bring it in. Usually any L. angustifolia lavenders that come into the house, do not survive. L. intermedia’s, L. heterophylla’s and some L. stoechas do just fine. I remember reading once that during the winter, our homes are drier than the Sahara Desert and I think this is part of the problem.

Anyway… rather than focus on garden issues, I thought over the next few blogs, I would share a few of my favorite lavender books. December I was housebound with a cold and was glad to have a few days to read The Unlikely Lavender Queen, A Memoir of Unexpected Blossoming, which I enjoyed very much.

The author is Jeannie Ralston, a successful magazine writer and consequently, the book is well written. The story begins with her life in New York, but soon she is in love with and marries a National Geographic photographer and eventually finds herself living in rural Texas.

The story is autobiographical and covers much more than the creation of their lavender farm in the Texas Hill Country; post-partum depression, compromise in marriage and the joy of true love.

However, if you are thinking of starting a lavender farm, you will get some good ideas from this book. What they do not share are details, such as what variety they plant, but the story of how the farm was developed and the marketing they do is very interesting and could be adapted to nearly any business. Lavender is very labour-intensive, both the initial planting and the harvesting and they describe how cope; they try hiring people, use workshop participants, have friends and neighbours pitching in. As they come up with ideas to build and expand their business, more lavender farms start around them and they are instrumental in developing their region as a tourist destination. I found all those details very interesting.

If you are looking for further information about lavender, please visit my site;
www.growing-lavender.com

Lavender Ice Tea

Here’s my recipe for a lavender ice tea.  This year I tried a decaf green tea.

Boil enough water for 6 cups of tea.

Use 2 tea bags, or more if desired.

Pour the boiling water over the tea bags in a tea pot.  Add to the pot several fresh heads of lavender flowers.  I also had fresh orange mint in the garden, so put one stem with about 6 leaves into the pot.  It gives an ‘Earl Grey’ sort of flavor.  I do not use sugar, but you could add sugar, sweetener or honey at this point.

Let steep for 10 minutes.

Strain and cool.

Pour over ice and serve.

Lavender Festival at the Distillery District in Toronto.

The Vintage Gardener is hosting a lavender festival this week.  They have lots of dried lavender, beautiful lavender wreaths, soaps, oils, body lotions and lavender shortbread.  They also have 3 varieties for sale – L. a. “Munstead”, L.a. “Elegant Ice” and L. stoechas ‘Kew Red’.  There is the opportunity to make a lavender wreath, either a small one ($15), or medium one ($55).  I’ll be there signing books from 1:30 – 4:30 each day through Sunday.

I’ve met some really nice people, from Toronto, New York City and even Italy!

If you are looking for more info on lavender, please visit my site:

www.growing-lavender.com

Lavender in my garden

My lavender has been wonderful this year. I have a small city garden, but have about a dozen varieties that are winter hardy. Some of the younger plants like L. angustifolia Pink Perfume bloomed for the first time. However, even more exciting was my two week trip to Provence in France to see lavender fields there.

We took local tours out from Avingon. One tour visited lavender fields at the Senanque Abbey. Although the tour didn’t include seeing inside the abbey, the fields of L. angustifolia plants were in bloom, but I think they had some L. x intermedia’s fields in bud. It seems that France has had a lot of rain this year and the crop was a little behind – however from my point of view, perfect!

Another tour took us about an hour east of Avignon to Sault. It was a beautiful valley with fields of lavender.

Valley of lavender fields

In Avignon I picked up a book about making crafts with lavender and I was inspired to make some lavender wands when I got home with fresh lavender from my garden. I used L. x intermedia ‘Provence White’. This plant is 3 years old and just coming into its’ own with nice long stems, perfect for making wands.

 

News: I will be autographing books and answering your questions at the Lavender Festival, August 13 – 17 at the Distillery District in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This event is being hosted by The Vintage Gardener. There will be workshops, showing you simple ways to make lavender wreaths and decorative ideas with lavender. Lavender plants and cookies and wonderful herbal seed starting kits. At this point I will be there from around noon until 3pm each day. Hope to see you there.

If you are looking for more information on how to grow lavender, please visit my site:

www.growing-lavender.com

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!