I’ve always loved the smell of lavender. Lavender has a calming scent, one that feels soothing on the nerves. I’ve smelled lots of “lavender-scented” things over the years, but there’s nothing like the real thing.

Lavender fresh from the garden is gentle. It feels like one of those herbs you don’t even need to ingest to notice the benefits… by simply holding, touching, and smelling lavender, it’s healing magic has already begun.

Gardening sometimes involves a whole lot of trial and error. That has been the case with growing lavender in our garden. I have seen gorgeous, thriving lavender plants in the gardens of family and friends, and though we have grown lavender plants here over the years- they have not yet thrived.

We have tried growing lavender in a handful of different spots. One area didn’t get enough sun. Another area was too overgrown. The last few years we tried two other locations and learned something else our lavender plants don’t like, which is being planted near the vegetables where the sprinklers are sometimes used for watering.

We wondered where to try planting the lavender next, and had an idea about a different location in the garden. Jeff has now transplanted a few lavender plants to the new area where they won’t get overwatered. We will see how they do there.

I like to dream of thriving lavender plants here, and an abundance of lavender to harvest to make bundles to share. Will the lavender plants like their new spot and grow into large, thriving plants? Who knows? Perhaps our location surrounded by forest is not their favorite, or perhaps when we find just the right spot in the garden and continue adapting and tuning in to their needs… the lavender plants will thrive here after all.

I will tell you one thing though, we haven’t given up. That’s the thing about gardening- when one thing doesn’t work, try something else. There have been certain things we wanted to grow here that were not well suited to our location, that we ended up letting go. There have been other things that took a lot of experimenting before they did well here. Every year in the garden there are more experiments, and each kind of plant teaches us more about what it needs to thrive.

For now I am grateful for our humble lavender harvests, those few little bundles we bring in are savored and enjoyed. We don’t need a lot of something to enjoy it, in fact sometimes when we have less of something we savor and appreciate it even more.

P.S. We love making tiny lavender bundles.