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Mother, daughter team up to run a pick-your-own lavender farm in Fauquier County Date published: 6/14/2009
BY CATHY JETT White cabbage butterflies flitted from bush to bush as Edith Williamson walked through rows of lavender at her Fauquier County farm. The compact mounds of light purple spikes are 'Croxton's Wild,' she said, one of the first varieties to appear each summer at Seven Oaks Lavender Farm. People who come there during June and July to pick bouquets of the fragrant flowers often dry the blossoms for use in baking or buy already dried lavender in tins at the farm's gift shop. "We like 'Croxton' better than 'Provence' for cooking because it's sweeter," Williamson said. Provence, with its gray-green foliage and blue-violet flowers, was just coming into bloom last Monday, as were other Virginia-hardy varieties such as 'Fred Boutin,' 'Hidcote,' 'Seal,' 'Twickle' and 'Grosso,' or "fat spike" as it's more commonly known. "The rain held things back about a week," Williamson said. She and her daughter, Deborah Williamson, who lives next door with her husband, Paul Johnson, and their 10-year-old son, Lincoln, have been in the lavender business for six years. They started out with 100 plants, and now have 500 arranged in neat rows on an acre plot in front of Edith and Glenn Williamson's gray Cape Cod with its wide, inviting front porch. "A lot of people will come and say, 'Where are the fields of lavender?'" Edith Williamson said with a laugh. "This is it. We didn't have a market for more. Now that Debbie has gotten our lavender into Whole Foods, we plan to expand." Seven Oaks is a world way from Provence, France, with its famous fields of lavender. But it is one of a handful of Virginia farms now raising the plant known for its calming scent and culinary appeal. Most lavender farms in the United States are in Washington, California and Texas, Deborah Williamson said. On the East Coast there are a few in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, but Virginia appears to have the best climate and growing season. "The winters in Pennsylvania are too cold, and the summers in North Carolina are too hot," she said. "We're perfect, but we can't compete with out west." In some ways, growing lavender brings Deborah Williamson full circle. She was born in Bordeaux, France, when her father was stationed at a military base near there, but grew up on a 20-acre farm near Catlett.
Date published: 6/14/2009
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