Purple haze

On the lavender trail in Provence...

07/11/2005
Purple haze
A week ago my eyes were full of the color purple. I felt it was long overdue that I write about the ultimate Frenchgardening plant: lavender, and so Denis and I were in Provence to see the lavender fields in bloom.

Like any red-white-and-blue-blooded American lover of the bleu-blanc-rouge, I can't help but adore Provence. With its olive groves, ancient villages built of stone, and not least, its lavender, this sun-drenched region epitomizes everything romantic and wonderful about the south of France. And like many Americans, I suffered from a longing from having those calender images of Provençal lavender fields--probably taken through a blue-enhancing filter--burned into my brain. In order to complete my mental map of France, I needed to see those improbably perfect rows of lavender stretching like blue contour lines into the infinite blue horizon of the mountains of Provence.

Denis and I flew into Aix-en-Provence on a Thursday evening, and after a brief wander to revisit our favorite Aixian haunts, we drove toward Forqualquier and then onward toward Moustier-Ste-Marie, to check out its famous faience as a possible product for this website. On the way, the breathtaking fields of blue were already numerous--and much more varied than you might think. Many different lavender cultivars and hybrids are grown in the region, and each has its own particular hue, ranging from soft grey-lavender to violet to most intense, almost hallucinatory blue.

While the manicured fields of lavender--with never a weed visible in the rocky soil between the rows--are a vision of order, my favorite fields were the weedy ones. The lavender punctuated by red poppies, for example, were splendid, as was another that had been invaded by the bright yellow daisies of corn marigold (Chrysanthemum segetum). As always, I noted that the best inspirations for garden combinations and landscape design are the ready examples of nature, always humbling in their elegance and scale. In one field, the bleached blond of a wild grass was a punctuation in platinum to the deep blue of the lavender, and an echo of the ripe wheat adjacent, burning iridescent and nearly silver in the midday sun.

For me, perhaps the greatest charm of this region is that most of the weeds are the my most cherished culinary herbs--that trove of perfume and flavor that I use like a daily palette to paint our daily menus. Seeing these plants blanketing otherwise barren, rocky slopes by the thousands, more fragrant than any garden-grown example, simply drives me wild with wonder and delight. The Provençal cuisine I love so much is one entirely informed by the native plants of the region--the olive, and these treasures of the garrigue: thyme in all its variations, rosemary, savory...and lavender.

Luberon and the Vaucluse are lavender-growing regions because this queen of fragrance is a native herb--a "weed" growing wild among the rocks. Looking for a new way to use lavender in the landscape--while respecting its requirements for lots of light and drainage? How about this wild clump, perfectly placed in front of a sun-silvered old olive stump, before a backdrop of the region's indigenous stone? Growing lavender here is a matter of making the most of the natural niche. The area is too dry and the soil too poor to grow most traditional crops. But these conditions grow the most fragrant lavender in the world.

Not surprisingly, the inimitable lavender blue of Lavandula angustifolia, a part of Provençal life since antiquity, has been incorporated into its manmade environment like a talisman. Doors, shutters, storefronts--in short, anything outdoors in need of a coat of paint is likely to be painted...lavender. And just as this color that hovers between blue, purple, and gray blends perfectly with the Provençal landscape, so it is the ideal ornament for buildings made of the native stone. Its coolness gives your eye welcome respite from the sun's everpresent glare.

After spending the night at the Bonne Etape in Château-Arnoux, and eating a personally historic dinner (detailed in the Paris postcard), we headed onward toward the Val de Sault, much more a high plateau than an actually valley, and the region growing la crème de la crème of French lavender. The town itself affords superb bird's-eye panoramas of the surrounding fields that give an inkling of what the pilot of a small plane flying over the region must see.

Steeped in the history of lavender, Sault is at the heart of the lavender industry. Although it was too early for the fields to be harvested and the lavender distilled, an alert to the region's importance was a big distillery shed on the outskirts of town labeled "Occitane". That's Occitane of Provence, of course--the French fragrance giant with stores all over the world. Within the village of Sault, the magic color blue is everywhere--on housefronts, window decorations...and even this wagon.

The next morning--Sunday, we drove to the nearby village of Ferrassières, where a lavender festival was in full swing. This is where we saw the bluest lavender--a dark, deep, intense royal blue with only a touch of purple in its hue. Bouquets and decorations of this local variety were on display and for sale everywhere, as were all sorts of comestible lavender products--including naturally creamy lavender honey (my favorite honey of all), lavender-almond croquants--a crisp, hard biscotti-type cookie of which I bought--and eventually ate--a whole bag. And what was for lunch at the food wagon? Why, duck legs braised in lavender honey over a wood fire. Who could resist? Certainly we couldn't...

There were many displays concerning the history of lavender, including its cultivation and harvest, which traditionally is accomplished with a sort of deeply curved machete-type tool called a fauche à lavande (see photo below left). There were giant old copper alambiques, or distilleries, which traditionally and economically were fired with lavender "hay" from the harvest. One of the most touching stands I saw was a woman who sold lentils, chickpeas, and épautre, an ancient precursor of wheat which I believe is called spelt in English. Her decoration was sheafs of these three crops, which I found touching because this grain and the two beans were among the first food crops domesticated in the Mediterranean basin, and can be considered to have nourished the flourishing of civilization in this region.

To visit the lavender fields of the Vaucluse and Luberon in July is to immerse yourself in the blue shades of long tradition. Lavender more than any other plant was responsible for the flowering of the perfume industry around Grasse, and perhaps for the pre-eminence of France in the formulation of perfumes. These blue fields--everpresent since people domesticated this most fragrant plant in the rocky wilds surrounding them, still stitch this part of France into a patchwork of blue and gold along with the local épautre, chick pea, and lentil and the silvery plumes of olive trees--plants that for centuries have nourished man's existence in the beautiful but hardscrabble landscape of southern France.

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