Lost Mountain Lavender

#1 on Farm Tour Map
Farm Tour Bus Route A

Farm Activities

1541 Taylor Cutoff Rd.
Sequim, WA 98382
360-681-2782
www.lostmountainlavender.com

 

 

        A unique lavender experience!

Visit our specialty farm and see over 100 cultivars of lavender. Take a guided tour with farm owner, Barbara Hanna and learn about many of the different varieties and their uses.

Pick your own fragrant bouquet, learn to make lavender crafts, visit our Cottage Gift Shop for the perfect lavender item and plant, or just relax in the shade of our beautiful orchard. We'll have music and food all weekend for your ultimate lavender experience.

 

Variety is the Spice of Lavender Life!

Story by Betty Oppenheimer

            At Lost Mountain Lavender, it’s all about variety. Bold, spiky Grosso, pink, peppery Melissa, the sweet scent of Folgate, or Hidcote’s deep purple color. In all, over 100 varieties of lavender plants and a wide variety of signature bath and body products mark Lost Mountain’s success.

The grounds even boast a variety of well-established trees. The local legend is that the farm’s original owners – long before lavender – were members of the “Tree of the Month” Club.

            “We have larch trees, which are deciduous pines, burgundy smoke tree, corkscrew willow, a large ginkgo and other unlikely varieties in the gardens,” said Barbara Hanna, co-owner of the farm with her husband Gary since 2003. “There is a quaintness to this farm that makes people want to just wander around. It really feels like you’re in the country.”

            Located 1.5 miles up Lost Mountain Road off Highway 101, the lavender farm is dotted with old fruit trees, a healthy row of tayberries, and wildflowers along the road that draw people in. It’s a small farm – 3 acres total, one full acre planted in lavender, but that allows Barbara the time to enjoy what she loves about it.

“I love the variety of work I get to do,” said Barbara, mentioning the field and propagation work in two greenhouses, the manufacturing of soaps, lotions, Lost Mountain’s famous fizzy bath balls, new vegetable-based body powder, and the products she sews, including lavender-filled drawer liners, sleep pillows and more. “It’s a great balance of product, retail and gardening.”

Barbara knew coming into this venture that it was important for her to find a niche and build on it.

“For us, it’s the varieties we grow that make us a specialty farm, plus the quality of our product and the fact that we offer a personal, hands-on experience,” she said, adding that she sells to boutiques across the country, but has had to pick carefully, scattering locations geographically and always choosing quality vendors.

“I’ve had to be realistic about the amount of production I can do, and sell accordingly,” she explained, so that the quality of the product can be maintained.

            Barbara and Gary Hanna left high-tech lives in the computer gaming field in the Seattle metropolitan area three years ago. She brought her sales, public relations, advertising and art skills and love of gardening and crafts, and he brought his portfolio. Now, three years later, illustrator Gary is successfully freelancing from his home studio, while Barbara manages the farm. Both of their hoophouses are filled with plants – some tiny starts and some intentionally allowed to grow to gallon size since last year – with newly propagated plugs warmed by water pipes submerged in the soil below their delicate roots.

When Lost Mountain Lavender Farm was first planted by Dennis and Jennifer Taylor in October 1998, they traded lumber for their first 500 plants from Kenmarry Moor Lavender Farm, originally nurtured into maturity by Mary Lofstrom, the very first lavender farmer in the Sequim-Dungeness Valley. The Taylors developed a clientele loyal to their bath and body products and to Jennifer’s ceramics, which are still sold in the on-site Cottage Gift Shop.

“I have been building onto the foundation that the Taylors set,” said Barbara of the inventory in the shop, a remodeled moonshiners shed with walls stenciled with the names of lavender varieties.

Gary’s father Joe, who came from a farming community in South Carolina, and his mother Marilyn are essential to the success of the farm. Joe is the field manager, roto-tilling the weeds from the fields in spring and fall. Marilyn is Barbara’s “unpaid marketing director. In spring, we load up her car with rack cards, and she hits the road from Port Townsend to Port Angeles, stopping at all of the hotels and bed and breakfasts for us,” said Barbara.

Harvest is always hard work, but a fun event.

“We have a great crew of local high school kids. We harvest completely by hand, in three different drying sessions. We have limited room to hang the lavender to dry - the garage, and the pumphouse – so we harvest before, during and after the festival, depending on the weather and how far along each variety is. It’s the mix of so many varieties that gives us that flexibility,” explained Barbara.

The farm is open from 10-6 daily in June, July and August, set up with tables in the front yard to encourage folks to come, relax, and bring a picnic. As development has increased adjacent to their small farm along Taylor Cut-Off Road, the Hannas planted 120 fast-growing trees, to foster a sense of rural privacy.

“We’re trying to control our little postage stamp of land, to make it as beautiful and as much of a getaway for people as possible,” said Barbara.