Blackdown Hills Lavender

Blackdown Hills Lavender is a new venture for us at Pay Farm. Inspired by the fragrant lavender fields in Provence, we have just planted a 4 acre field with ‘Grosso’ Lavender. A hardy, fragrant plant that does well in the English Climate.
“lavender has more uses than any other plant known in the Western world, Fresh Lavender bunches and a longer history of such uses”.
Few plants have as many inherent properties, and it is these properties that are responsible for its widespread deployment in so many cultures.

With its strong visual appeal, lavender has been used for centuries in a variety of household decorative settings, both indoors and outdoors.

Its superb fragrances – highly varied among the hundreds of lavender flower varieties – have led to its being a long-time fragrance of choice in the perfume industry, both as a pure essence or in blending.

Less known by some in more modern times (but rapidly changing), lavender’s use as a superb culinary herb in both savory and sweet applications has an equally long history.

Among the more significant therapeutic properties of lavender are ….

Antiseptic – used alone or in combination (as a constituent of many lotions, creams, etc) on the skin in the treatment of abrasions, cuts, burns, inflammatory skin conditions (both acute and chronic) etc, lavender helps to promote better healing by inhibiting the propensity for many of these to become infected. Being one of the few essential oils that can can be safely applied to the skin, lavender essential oil can be used in its undiluted form for optimal potency, or in more dilute form as lavender hydrosol.

Topical anesthetic – among its most potent properties, being most dramatically used in burns and insect (or even marine animal) stings. The effects are almost instantaneous and with no known associated toxicity.

Sedative – probably the longest recognized property. Reports of lavender as a safe and effective calming, relaxing and even sleep-inducing agent appear frequently In the literature and as far back as the early Greeks and Romans, and it remains one of the most favored of all essential oils in massage therapy.