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Jeannie Ralston
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Jeannie Ralston and her husband, National Geographic photographer Robb Kendrick, opened the first commercial lavender farm in Texas, called Hill Country Lavender. The San Antonio Express News has called them the “leading authorities on lavender production and marketing in the state.”
Jeannie’s first book, The Unlikely Lavender Queen: A Memoir of Unexpected Blossoming, was published by Doubleday Broadway in 2008. Her writing has also appeared in Life, Time, National Geographic, The New York Times, Smithsonian, Audubon, Texas Monthly, Glamour, Conde Nast Traveler and Travel & Leisure. She is a contributing editor at Parenting magazine.
She recently launched a give-back program called The Seed Campaign. She will return a portion of every book sold via her website, www.jeannieralston.com, to a worthy cause, such as a pueblo in Mexico that is growing lavender as a cash crop so that the men don’t have to leave to work in the United States.
Jeannie currently lives in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, with her husband and their two sons. |
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Soon after my husband and I started the first commercial lavender farm in Texas, I discovered something that people have known since Roman times: If there were a superlative competition among herbs, lavender easily would win the “Best All Around” title.
First, it’s so beautiful to look at. Visually, rows of lavender in a field are nature's version of a pointillist work of art. Up close, every stem, every tiny bud on the pipe-cleaner-shaped flower is discernable. At middle distance, the hundreds of flowers on each plant meld into one form that suggests a pom-pom and then even farther in the distance the plants come together to create one long uninterrupted row.
Then there’s that remarkable scent – sweet and hearty, potent but not overbearing.
An aromatherapist I know has called lavender the middle “C” of scents. Lavender, well balanced and consistent, combines well with so many other scents – high notes like lemon and peppermint, as well as low notes such as sandalwood and jasmine. Like an effusive socialite at a party, it’s a great mixer, effortlessly making friends all around.
Wonderfully for us, lavender’s potency is not just experienced in our nostrils. Its powers reach far deeper, into our cerebellums. Lavender is God’s gift to the anxious, the stressed, the depressed, the sleepless.
In medical studies over the past 20 years, lavender essential oil has been shown to have a sedative effect on a variety of subjects from heart patients to mice made extra-hyper with caffeine injections.
Researchers in Japan monitored electrocardiograms, blood flow and respiratory rates of students who had just received a lavender footbath and found that brain centers corresponding to relaxation were almost purring.
A study of mildly to moderately depressed patients showed that inhaling lavender tincture while using a prescription antidepressant was more effective than just the prescription drug going solo.
Most of us who have ever had lavender pass near our noses don’t need science to confirm such soothing effects. We have our own evidence.
For me it was the months on our commercial lavender farm in Texas when we had lavender bouquets drying in the garage below our office. I remember those times as exceptionally serene. A computer breakdown or even an obstinate clerk at the electric company’s help line couldn’t get me riled up.
As unfortunate as it is that all offices can’t sit on a stash of dried lavender, you can reproduce the effects with a host of products.
Lavender soy candles and oil diffusers (devices that heat up essential oils) can fill a whole room with the essence of lavender – the nasal equivalent of a great big tender, “shhhhhh.” You can find eye pillows and neck pillows stuffed with lavender that are as soft as your mood is after you’ve spent some time together.
Also available are a slew of potions that allow lavender to show off its good relationships with other scents and its natural Valium qualities. For instance, a combination of lavender, peppermint and marjoram makes an effective slayer of headaches. Lavender together with chamomile helps prevent motion sickness and can help treat other cases of the queasies.
Lavender offers benefits as well for the more physical problems that ail us. It’s long been used as an anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory agent in folk medicine. Lavender is one of only two essential oils that can be applied directly to the skin undiluted (tea tree is the other).
Lavender – with its oxymoronic strong yet gentle qualities – works wonders on acne, eczema, sunburn and other skin conditions. Long before Neosporin, it was used on cuts, scratches and burns to prevent infection, increase blood flow to the area and reduce scarring.
If you’re bugged by bugs, lavender should be your herb of choice. Not only does it help relieve itching and swelling when an insect does its damage, it also helps keep the critters away in the first place. Obviously lacking refined taste, most insects don’t like the lavender scent.
This is why many families in rural France keep dried lavender bouquets on their window sills. The bouquets might as well be signs to the insects that say, “Don’t even think about coming in.” You can buy all-natural bug repellents made up lavender combined variously with citronella, lemongrass and eucalyptus. These are ideal for children since they do their job without toxic chemicals.
One of the best-selling items at our farm has been a natural moth repellent. Small sacks of dried lavender will keep moths away from woolens just as effectively as moth balls, and who of sound mind and nose wouldn’t opt for a sweater that smells like lavender instead of the cough-inducing camphor of moth balls?
We also developed a product called Scorpo-Shoo, which is very useful in our part of Texas where scorpions like to wreak havoc. Our Scorpo-Shoos are a combination of dried lavender and dried citrus, neither or which the vile scorpions can stand.
Knowing what I do about lavender and its lengthy list of uses, I do what folk healers have done for centuries – keep a small bottle of lavender essential oil with me always. That bottle is my all-purpose, cure-all, feel-good juice. Plus, when I need to freshen up, it also doubles as my perfume. Now that’s what I call versatile.
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