America’s Newest Hot Spot for Lavender Is…Rural Kentucky?

From Somerset to Georgetown, Kentucky entrepreneurs are proving that lavender's allure extends far beyond Provence.

There’s something fairy tale-like about lavender fields: with their noble, purple-hued flowers exploding on long stalks and signature, soothing fragrance that perfumes the air—maybe helping to calm your racing mind for a moment. And thanks to some determined, creative agricultural entrepreneurs across rural Kentucky—from Meade County to Brookingsville—being enveloped by the charms of the lavender plant is now a five-senses, in-person experience rather than only imagined via a dusty postcard from Provence or a flickering screensaver on your laptop. Kentucky’s own lavender farms are just a quick drive down the road.

Woodstock Lavender Company’s U-Pick event, 2021 (Sarah Baird for The Goldenrod)

Lavender might seem like a strange choice of crop to be blossoming across Kentucky and, frankly, it is. Kentucky weather is the pits for growing lavender. It’s too sopping wet in the spring, and too mercurial in the winter for lavender’s (relatively) fragile temperament. Some years, the plants simply don’t take. Sometimes, nature laughs in the face of planning. And given the contentious relationship between Kentucky’s climate and the intoxicating plant, the season for lavender blooms here is a relative blink—about a month, typically from the end of May through June—which means that if you’re seeking a magical, frolicking-in-the-field snipping lavender bundles afternoon or sipping lavender tea straight from the source experience…you have to hurry. But that’s all part of the fleeting allure of lavender in Kentucky. Call it a quest—because every good fairy tale needs a quest, after all—and you’ll be able to return to the local lavender fields of your mind time-and-time again.