Lavender loveliness

It's something I wanted to do when I was in Wellington, but never got around to it. It was such a long way to go, but since I moved to Featherston that all changed. Now picking lavender in Carterton at Lavender Abbey is just around the corner.

A good friend of mine came up for the weekend and together we headed out on Sunday morning. Despite some rain and strong wind during the night, the weather settled and we were treated to good picking weather, though there was still a fine drizzle – it helped keep the heat of the day down.

Lavender Abbey is set in beautiful surrounds with grassy paddocks and sheep on all sides. The field itself wasn't quite as big as we imagined, but then each compact lavender bush produces a fair crop. The secret is to prune the bush back at the end of the season to encourage increased flower growth and long flower stems in the next season.

Lavender Abbey, Carterton, New Zealand

L. x 'Grosso'

Lavender Abbey grows the variety, Lavandula x intermedia 'Grosso', which has long stems and is strongly perfumed. Compared to the common garden varieties L. angustifolia and L. dentata, which tend to smell simply 'herby', the fragrance of L. x 'Grosso' is sweet and truly a perfume.

The field was buzzing – quite literally. There must have been thousands of bees buzzing about the bushes and we picked the lavender rather gingerly and made sure that when we left we checked our bunches for any stowaways before getting in the car.

There is certainly money to be made in growing lavender. We paid $5 a bunch and I came back with a double bunch for $10. So at a rough approximate, if one counts only the flowers, you could be looking at a going rate of around $100/kg?! And with lavender and vintage goods making a come back, I think it might be a good time to start planting lavender. I'm certainly going to get my own Grosso plants so that I can harvest my own flowers for free.

As I want to use the flowers in bath salts and other products, I prepared the flowers for drying when I got home. This is easily done, you don't need any fancy equipment, just some netting and a warm dry area like a conservatory or a hot water cupboard. Wrap the flowers in a square of netting and tie to the bunch. This is to catch any flowers that fall off and to protect the flowers from bugs and dust. Then hang the bunch in your dry area for several weeks until the flowers are dry. I tied my bunch to an old coathanger to make it easier to hang it in my hot water cupboard.

Drying the flowers