It's the moment the marks the end of the lavender season. Our team of gardeners and volunteers, lead by head gardener Julia, get to work cutting down the lavender flowers and bagging them up, ready to be sent to the distillery to be made in to lavender oil.
The process starts small, with some of the earlier varieties harvested a couple of weeks before. But by the end of August, all the flowers which were once vibrantly purple, are cut down and gathered by the team.
It's a physical job, bundling all the cut stems and wrangling them into big sacks; we advise our volunteers not to wear anything they'd mind getting dusty or dirty!
Through the day, fuelled by sandwiches, cake and coffee, the team packs around 60 huge bags of lavender. No mean feat ordinarily, and made a little more challenging this year thanks to the drizzle!
These bags are then sent away to our partner distillery and turned into 100% pure essential oil, via a process involving a huge kettle!
The flowers are steamed, releasing the pure oil from the buds, which is collected and cooled. ready to be blended with other ingredients, or kept pure in it's essential oil form.
We do keep some lavender back though.
While a lot of it is sent to be distilled, we save some lavender to make our dried bunches which are always popular in the shop. And we also keep some to create our lavender wall, which make a popular photo backdrop just outside our Tea Room.
Interested in trying some of our products?
The Yorkshire Lavender range is available in our online shop, all year around. Have a browse.
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