Michigan Lavender

Few flowers announce themselves the way lavender does. Before you see the slender spikes of purple-blue, you catch the scent: clean, herbal, faintly sweet, carried on the warm air of a summer field. Lavender is a woody Mediterranean perennial in the mint family, prized for the fragrant flower spikes that rise on long silvery-green stems in midsummer. Its appeal runs deeper than color. The oils packed into every bud make it one of the most useful cut flowers we grow, equally at home in a bridal bouquet, a bundle drying in the rafters, or a sachet tucked into a linen drawer. Calming, nostalgic, and unmistakably fragrant, it is a flower people reach out to touch.

Michigan turns out to be excellent lavender country, and the proof is a spiral you can see from space. In Shelby, on the state’s west side, Cherry Point Farm & Market grows a lavender labyrinth so large it shows up on satellite imagery. Fourth-generation owner Barbara Bull planted it in 2001, and its winding paths, bordered by lavender, black-eyed Susans, and hollyhocks, circle a twelve-point herb garden at the center. It is far from the only lavender destination in the state. Growers gather each summer for the Michigan Lavender Festival at the Imlay City fairgrounds, and small lavender farms have taken root across Michigan, drawn by the same well-drained soils and bright July days that make our own crop bloom so richly.

Locally grown and fresh-cut is where lavender truly earns its place. Our member farmers harvest the spikes just as the lowest florets begin to open, the stage that holds the deepest color and the most oil, so the fragrance carries whether you use the stems fresh or hang them to dry. That is lavender’s rare gift: it dries beautifully, keeping its shape, its soft purple, and much of its scent for months. Reserve a DIY bucket and request lavender for a wedding arch or a farmhouse arrangement you build yourself, or let our design team weave it through a bouquet where a single brush of the hand releases the whole summer. Fresh now, fragrant long after. See Michigan’s own lavender labyrinth at Cherry Point Farm & Market.