Story: Everything's Coming Up Lavender at the Sequim Lavender Festival

Everything lavender sounded like too much of a good thing to me, but I tagged along with a friend to visit the Sequim Lavender Festival on a sunny, mild day in July, 2008. The annual street fair and tour of local lavender farms is held the third week in July in the rural farming and retirement community of Sequim, (pronounced "skwim") Washington. My friend wanted to buy some unique varieties of lavender, some to use for cooking and some for their showy blossoms. I just wanted to take a sunny trip to a spectacularly beautiful area at the foot of the Olympic Mountains near the Olympic National Park in northwest Washington State. Sequim is a scenic two-hours by car from Seattle and is situated on Highway 101, a coastal tourist artery up the West Coast of the United States.

When people talk about the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, they usually describe drippy temperate rain forests, all ferny and mossy, with more than one hundred inches of rain each year, snow-capped peaks or rocky, nearly inaccessible beaches and shorelines. The area around Sequim completely shatters that stereotype. The town is situated in the Sequim-Dungeness Valley, a unique (for western Washington) confluence of sunny, warm days, cool nights and soil conditions which make it the best place in North America to grow lavender plants, or so say festival officials, who call the area "The Lavender Capital of North America." The valley was formed by glaciers retreating from the Olympic Mountains, and the soil was built up by sandy silt from the (still) glacier-fed, fast-flowing Dungeness River. A rain shadow created by the Olympic Mountains causes the sunny days, and, with an annual rainfall of only about 16 inches, this microclimate is ideal for growing lavender.

After experiencing the festival and visiting several of the local lavender farms, I don't doubt the festival's claim that it is the "largest lavender event in North America," even though I've never visited any of the other areas that have lavender festivals and proclaim to be the "lavender capital" of some area. Blanco, Texas calls itself the "Lavender Capital of Texas," Avignon calls itself the "Lavender Capital of France," and Streetsboro, Ohio recently labeled itself as the "Lavender Capital of the Midwest." Calling yourself the lavender capital seems to be a thriving and ever-expanding past-time. By learning about the culinary uses of lavender and its history as one of the first ingredients successfully used for "aroma-therapy" in ancient times, I welcome any and all expansiion of lavender-growing.

There may be other exciting lavender festivals, but Sequim certainly knows how to put on a three-day event that gets the entire community involved and allows visitors to experience a wide variety of activities. I think I am clear enough in my geography to assert that none of the other lavender festivals can boast a "Puffin Sunset Marine Cruise" showing off the unique marine bird and wildlife in this part of the Pacific Rim as a featured event in a lavender festival. However, I'm not ready to count out Blanco, Texas or Streetsboro, Ohio in the contest to see who has the best "Barn Dance and Lavender Hoedown." On a map where visitors could place a pin showing their home town, almost every state was represented, along with about 25-30 foreign countries. A heavy concentration of pins in Texas and Ohio showed that their residents were not averse to checking out the competition.

With concurrent events like a three-day street fair, a jazz festival, story-telling and salmon dinner at the nearby Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe of American Indians, a quilt show, art studio tours, wine tastings, a golf tournament, cooking demonstrations and a Gilbert and Sullivan revue, festival goers can do more than stroll through lavender farms and sniff the fragrant blossoms. The only places in town that didn't smell like lavender were the (very clean) portable toilets, and I've already made a suggestion to festival organizers that they use lavender-scented deodorizers in them next year.

For me, however, visiting the eight farms on this year's tour was the highlight of the festival. Besides wandering through acres of ten or twelve varieties of lavender at each site, there were booths full of local arts and crafts, live music at each venue and made-to-order sit-down meals, which all proved that the advance preparation and energy by the participant farm owners and vendors were extraordinary.

The next time my friend wants to attend a lavender festival, I won't have to make up an excuse to go along. I may even initiate the trip and invite a few more friends to go with us.

The Sequim Lavender Festival website has details and links about transportation, accommodations and other information at www.lavenderfestival.com, or e-mail info@lavenderfestival.com.