Business is Blooming
The Umpqua Valley has long been known as fertile ground for grapes, blueberries and a wide range of other high-quality products of nature, including, more recently, lavender.
Story by Brittany Arnold
A leisurely drive through the Umpqua Valley is a trip through a scenic paradise offering wide-open spaces, rolling vineyards, blankets of orchards and fields of lush green. Adding a spray of captivating purples and blues to this colorful quilted landscape is a relative newcomer to the valley.
The emergence of lavender farms throughout Roseburg and the surrounding area has started to catch the attention not just of locals, but also outsiders, including businesses and investors.
“The Umpqua Valley has a microclimate and the perfect soil for lavender,” says Keri Kovach Roid, owner of Growing Miracles Lavender Garden. “It has the right temperatures and right amounts of rain and sun. We have perfect conditions for it.”
Keri Kovach Roaid and Howard Sand (photo by Jonathan Cummings)
The beginning of Roid’s lavender venture is the stuff of a real-life farm fairytale. After living a big-city corporate life for 32 years, Roid was encouraged by her childhood friend, Howard Sand, to move back to her hometown Roseburg. Sand also provided her the motivation to finally start the lavender farm she had always talked about, even offering her a section of his family hazelnut farm, Wesley Orchards, off Lower Garden Valley Road.
Roid planted her first batch of lavender shortly after moving back to Roseburg in 2016.
“Obviously it is beautiful to look at, but also the smell is amazing, the sound, the feel…and you can eat it. It just literally touches all your senses,” she says. “I kept this dream in my head and figured that it would never happen, and then it happened. It’s a Hallmark movie, hence the name Growing Miracles.”
Every Hallmark story includes a love affair, and Roid’s is no exception. She and Sand are now engaged to be married. The 80-acre farm they operate together now includes 3,700 lavender and is the site of their annual lavender festival which last year attracted some 9,500 people.
“I kept telling Howard, ‘We had 9,500 people at our house!’ It just reinforces that this community is a tourist destination,” says Roid, who also helps other new farms get off – or out of – the ground by propagating and sharing about 12,000 baby lavender plants.
Southwest of Roseburg, in Tenmile, McLeod’s Lavender is one of the newer farms Roid has supplied. Owner Melanie McLeod Prummer agrees that lavender farms are helping attract tourists to the area. “With the tourism in the wine industry, this just adds something to that,” she said.
Like Roid, Prummer fell in love with the way lavender made her feel. She moved to the United States from Australia at age 21 and has worked in non-profit management since, the last eight years as the executive director of Peace at Home Advocacy Center.
Melanie McLeod Prummer (photo by Thomas Boyd)
Like Roid, Prummer fell in love with the way lavender made her feel. She moved to the United States from Australia at age 21 and has worked in non-profit management since, the last eight years as the executive director of Peace at Home Advocacy Center.
“Mental health work can be emotionally draining,” she says. “In 2017, I went to two farms and picked lavender. I realized that being with the lavender, cutting it and processing it, I felt rejuvenated. It brought me joy.”
From her first experience on that lavender farm, Prummer took home not only a dream of starting a farm, but also some Provence lavender, which her husband used to make sausage. The McLeod’s farm now specializes in culinary lavender.
The lavender sausage has been their biggest hit, selling out the first day at the local farmer’s market. Other McLeod products featuring their lavender include jelly, syrup, coconut oil scrub, shea butter scrub, chocolate blueberries, fudge, apples and Scottish shortbread.
While Prummer enjoys experimenting with new food items infused with lavender, she also has plans to develop a signature oil using Australian Eagerton Blue, a lavender that is fairly uncommon in the U.S..
Both Growing Miracles Lavender Garden and McLeod’s Lavender are open to the public. McLeod’s is by appointment only. Products can be ordered via the farm’s Facebook page.
Growing Miracles Lavender Garden also offers products online at growingmiracleslavendergarden.com.
Products from both farms can be found in several local stores and farmers markets.
Photo by Jonathan Cummings.
In July, JosephJane Winery released its second batch of the popular lavender
wine,a rosé featuring pinot gris and
cabernet sauvignon for the blend. The infused Folgate lavender comes from Growing Miracles Lavender Garden just
down the road from JosephJane which
offers wood-fired pizza to accompany its wines. It’s located at 155 Lower Garden Valley Road in Roseburg. Hours vary; check their Facebook page for updates.
