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Leeon Angel had not expected to be helping his wife run such a successful agricultural business when he retired following 30 years with his accounting partnership in downtown Seattle. His retirement present to himself, an elegant French-made airplane, sits idle on a landing strip nearby for most of the farming season. His time is consumed instead by the vintage seed cleaner that he modified to clean the lavender buds not only for their crop but also that of Hanna and other growers.

Cathy Angel majored in sociology at Washington State University, then switched fields to become project manager for a commercial food-freezing equipment company.

Although the Angels had raised llamas for 16 years, they decided, when Leeon retired, that animals tied them down too much and so looked for a different form of agriculture. “We decided maybe a crop would be fun,” says Cathy.

Now, as the largest wholesale producer in the valley and with 30,000 bundles of lavender drying in the barn, the irony of that move is hardly lost on them.

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_{Curtis Beus, director of Clallam County Extension, played an active role in starting the lavender industry around Sequim. He is author of the much-consulted Growing and Marketing Lavender.}

_{This year’s Sequim Lavender Festival is July 20-22.}

_{Visit Barbara Collier Hanna's Lost Mountain Lavender online, and Cathy and Leeon Angel's online store, Sequim Lavender Farms.}

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Sequim has come to refer to itself as the “Lavender Capital of North America.” Even though the valley’s production is miniscule in relation to the world market, their niche is unique. Provence, for example, from which the Sequim growers drew their inspiration, devotes most of its lavender production toward the distillation of lavender oil rather than toward value-added products and lavender-focused tourism.

Hanna’s love of gardening plus an apparently equal love of variety has resulted in her three-acre farm supporting 120 different varieties of lavender, from the large, deep-blue-blossomed Grosso to Melissa, an English culinary lavender with a peppery taste. Hanna is doing more of her own propagation, as it can be hard to get some varieties through other growers.

The Angels have kept their varietal retinue to 14, with their dominant variety being Grosso, which lends itself nicely to floral arrangements as well as buds for processing into other products. They have also started growing Goldenseal, a high-value, medicinal root crop that takes years to mature. They may start harvesting next year—-if they have the time.

Even though lavender’s history as a medicinal, culinary, and floral plant reaches back beyond Roman times, lavender as an agricultural enterprise is new to North America. There is no ready market for bulk lavender, and so the growers of Sequim have drawn lavenderphiles to their fields, through hard work, enterprising marketing, and enhancing an already beautiful landscape.

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