Growing Lavender in the Midwest and Loving it!

If you had told me we would have 1/2 an acre of lavender blooming at any point 3 years ago, I would have thought it was an amazing idea, but it would have sounded completely far-fetched annnnd completely dreamy.

I’d spent 4 solid years testing out planting methods, testing my own theories about how to grow successfully, and making some accidental discoveries about growing lavender in the harsh growing conditions here in Zone 5b, Central Iowa. It was mostly observation and those ‘happy accidents’ that propelled us so far forward with enabling success. Crazy, right!?

Lavender prefers a more mild climate, with poor soil, neither of these Iowa has for the most part. Our winters are tough, getting incredible cold and conversely, our summers are crazy hot with extremely high humidity, which lavender plants dislike immensely.

But here we are, into our second growing season with lavender, reaping a bounty of blooms! Also, as we head into Fall, we’re even getting a small out of a second bloom on our plants, which has been nice for wedding work and to use for a few additional products.

Our fields yielded so many blooms, we spent nearly a solid month and a half cutting all the blooms, almost daily, into our workshop for small batch hand crafted distillation and bud drying (for dried bunches and sachets).

We enjoyed every moment of it an also enjoyed sharing it with photographers who brought out so many of their clients. We were booked solid each evening for a month and a half with newly engaged couples, families, and senior photo session.

Just incredible to get to share the lavender field with folks and to get to see the amazing photos. Check out this amazing blog post with some additional photos by Stephanie Daggett, here. It makes my heart happy to see such beauty, captured and shared with others to enjoy. So beautiful!

Adam even had fun with taking photos, breaking out his electronic ‘toy’, his new drone, to take a few photos of us in the lavender. Gotta say, that drone really takes some amazing photos!

We also added so many classes, classes, classes! Everything from mocktail making with lavender simple syrup with Jeff Naples, the Beard Behind the Bar, to lavender distillation. You name it, we tried it this year with great success. Look for a whole line-up of farm experiences based around lavender next year.

We so enjoyed having so many out to the farm to share our knowledge. We love getting to meet new people who share our excitement and love of plants.

Not only did we hold on-farm classes, but we also launched our first ever online course on growing lavender in the Midwest. We weren’t sure online learning was going to be something people were interested in, but we were oh so wrong. It’s been super popular!

The final offering we’ve centered around lavender is our lavender products, which I kind of talked briefly about in the beginning.

We spent so long, lovingly making each of these products on a small scale, by hand. It’s truly been a labor of love brining these lavender products to market and was a huge undertaking. I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we decided to expand out our lavender product offering beyond essential oil and hydrosol. Whooowee!

This year, we expanded our lavender products to include: lavender sugar, salve, bath salts, wreaths, and sachets. They’ve been really popular so far and I’m excited to be adding even more new items next year. I’m especially excited about the gorgeous locally made soy candles made for us by Angela at Sugarlane Soap Co. They’re absolutely incredible! They burn clean, have an amazing fragrance and burn for a really long time.

We’re thankful for the help of our amazing friend Keelia from K Henri Design for creating our packaging and also to Dani at Sugar Hill Photography for the wonderful product images. We couldn't have done any of these without these terrific gals.

So, are you ready to try to grow some lavender or sample some of our amazing products? We’ll have all of our amazing products online and available to the general public on 9/25/20. We can’t wait to share them with you, and for you all to share them with your loved ones.

XX Jenn

Growing Lavender in the Midwest