A few stems in front of our cottage
After seeing our neighbour’s beautiful field of lavender I told Mike, “I want lavender” meaning I would love some lavender bushes in front of our cottage.
This was interpreted into a hectare of land up the hill r the dam and so started the process of ordering and planting 5000 lavender bushes and no sooner were the first blossoms flowering, he was pushing me to find customers!
In no time at all, we were supplying lavender into Woolworths and exporting into London, selling up to 70 000 stems per week, also purchasing lavender from 2 neighbouring farms.
The weather and soil conditions in Wolvengat seem to suit lavendula dentate ‘candicans’ really well and as a result, we achieve the most stunning colour in our flower heads. We have mastered our cutting and pruning so as to produce lovely long sturdy stems.
Awards!
We entered the Cape Town Flower Show in 2004 with the help of our talented landscaper friend Julie Lovemore who created the most beautiful stand. Fabienne Bain of Fab Design Studio designed our packaging and also helped on the stand. We were rewarded with a gold medal for the stand and with a Green Industry Award, another Gold Medal, for our commercial endeavours, in linking our lavender with our fynbos from the farm, inspired in large part by the wonderful artistry of our dear late friend, Lindsay Stanford.
We kept this up for 3 years with the incredible help of our manager Tom Engel and our team of pickers, headed up by Ellen Joemat. However, living and working in Cape Town, it was too difficult to maintain, with costs mounting and the petrol price increasing at an alarming rate, so we put this operation on hold, coincidentally coinciding with the economy shutdown, so it was in fact opportune timing.
