The Lavender Lady

A banker turned farmer, Cheryl Wagner laughs that she still gardens green stuff, though her current crop offers a marked improvement in the fragrance department.
As proprietor of Andre Organic Lavender, Wagner cultivates nine varieties of the pungent perennial for both culinary and topical purposes.
“I worked with Rona Barrett when she had her lavender farm,” Wagner says, explaining her conversion from office to field work.
“I did a lot of research and development for her and I literally fell in love with the plant.”
Wagner launched her ambitious enterprise (which bears her maiden name) six years ago with help from her parents. Together they prepared the soil, installed an irrigation system and planted a mix of lavender selections, including “Grosso,” “Grappenhall,” “Melissa,” “Jean Davis,” “Vera,” “Tuscan,” and English lavender.         Wagner farms her 13,000 plants organically, in part because lavender “doesn’t need anything.”
“Once in a while you see a grasshopper,” she says, “but all they do is take a bite and realize they don’t like it. They don’t hurt the plants. As long as you have alkaline soil,” she adds, “that’s about all you need. And we have a lot of that around here.”
The different varieties lend themselves to different applications. For instance, Wagner uses “Grosso” in shampoos and body products because it contains a larger measure of camphor and its attendant medicinal properties.
In preparing seasonings, Wagner incorporates buds and leaves from “Vera” or “Melissa,” though she cites a visiting chef who raved about “Jean Davis,” “because you can use it on everything from cookies to meat.”
Early each July, Wagner enlists the help of her son to harvest the lavender flowers, drying some and distilling others—separately according to variety—into essential oil.
Using a dry-distillation method, she doesn’t soak the flowers in water but rather allows steam to rise up through them. The enriched steam then moves through a condenser equipped with internal coils.
Wagner pumps cold water into the coils, cooling the steam into water droplets, which tumble down a tube into the separator that divides water from oil.
“What’s really important,” Wagner reveals, “is that lavender oil is like a fine wine, the longer it sits, the better it gets. Ours rests in a —dark cool spot—I rent an air-conditioned storage space—for two years before we use it.”
In an effort to spread the wonders of lavender, Wagner often meets with health care professionals. In January, she donated 100 bottles of oil to the Cancer Foundation in Santa Barbara to help ease patients undergoing treatment.
“It helps to calm and soothe them,” she explains, “and it’s very good for wellness programs, too.
“Next month,” she continues, “we hope to donate 50 bottles of lavender oil to hospice. They use it with seniors, rub their feet or legs with it, and it relaxes them so much.”
Andre Organic Lavender stocks over 25 products, most of them made by Wagner herself. Items include lotions, shampoos, linen spray, room and breath fresheners, culinary seasonings and several flea-repelling pet-care preparations.
In July 2005, Wagner opened her Lavender Shoppe, a charming space stocked with an amazing variety of goodies. Lavender lovers unable to visit the farm can order the products on -line.
“Everything in the store is from our field,” Wagner smiles, “and most everything is made right on my kitchen table. This is definitely a labor of love, because everything is done by hand,” she adds.
“I invite everyone to come by for a visit and smell the lavender!”

Andre Organic Lavender is located at 926 West Highway 246, a fourth mile outside Buellton city limit. Open Sun., Mon. and Thurs, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., Fri. and Sat. 9 a.m.-5 p.m.  Farm tours for larger groups available. For more information, call 805-350-0593 or log on to andreorganiclavender.com.