Lavender is the bee’s knees for Sue

I’VE just come back from visiting a field full of lavender, where bees and butterflies flitted amongst the flowers and the air was filled with the scent of volatile oils.

This wasn’t in Provence, the traditional home of lavender farms, but in East Lothian where, for several years, Sue Tait has been cultivating the flowers on a large scale.

It started a number of years ago, when she was living in the village of Gullane.

“The soil in my garden was very sandy and I was puzzling over what to grow when I realised that I had the perfect conditions for lavender.”

As the flowers bloomed, Sue hit upon the idea of making them into lavender bags and favours, which she stitched herself and sold at craft fairs.

Soon, she had outgrown her garden and was cultivating her plants in a nearby field and then, when she married her husband Grant she moved production to his family farm.

Now Lothian Lavender is sold online as well as at fairs and Sue has recently doubled the number of plants that she grows.

“The secret to growing lavender successfully is to provide the plants with good drainage,” says Sue.

“Adding grit and organic material to the soil can help, but to be sure our plants aren’t affected by damp around the roots, we grow them on ridges.”

Sue also prunes the lavender when she harvests the flower spikes in August.

“By trimming to a few shoots up from the old wood, you give the plants time to put on new growth before autumn.

“This new growth then protects the heart of the plant from suffering from the combination of cold and damp, which can be fatal.

“If the new growth is lost, it doesn’t matter. Even if it succumbs to frost, the plant beneath it will survive.”

Treating the plants in this way will also prevent them becoming bare and straggly and extend their life from a few short years to perhaps decades.

It also gives them that dense, mounded habit that makes them such a useful structural plant for the winter months.

Now is the time of year when Sue propagates new lavender, taking off side shoots of around 10cm in length, with a woody heel attached, and setting them in pots of very gritty compost until new roots have been established.

During this period and in their first year, Sue waters the plants regularly, but once established she waters only when absolutely necessary.

In her lavender field Sue grows a variety called ‘Grosso’, which has deeply aromatic flowers, but she says its lax habit makes it untidy in the garden.

‘Hidcote’ she says is a better alternative and is the hardiest of all lavenders.

Every year she trials new varieties, testing them for hardiness and performance and her flowers are increasingly finding new demand from brides seeking locally-grown blooms for their bouquets.