As the summer heat breathes new life into Southern Oregon’s mountains and valleys, the changing season signifies the harvesting and drying time for the region’s lavender farms.

Celebrating the blooming period for the fragrant, mauve-colored plant, six different lavender farms across the Rogue and Applegate Valleys will celebrate the harvest season in June and July through the Southern Oregon Lavender Trail’s two multi-day festivals.

The Lavender Festivals will be held Fridays through Sundays, June 21-23, and again July 12-14.

Hours vary between the participating farms, and details can be found at southernoregonlavendertrail.com.

Lavender lovers in the region will have a wide range of activities, entertainment and products to peruse while visiting the participating farms.

The six participating farms include Applegate’s The English Lavender Farm; Dos Mariposas Vineyards and Lavender in Medford; Butte Creek Lavender Farm in Eagle Point; Lavender Ally Farm in Rogue River; Jacksonville’s Kingfisher Farm; and Goodwin Creek Gardens in Williams.

“We very informally put together the Southern Oregon Lavender Trail as a group of like-minded people who wanted to create an attraction for people to come out to the Applegate Valley at the time, and I think it works,” said Sue Owen, owner of The English Lavender Farm. “Each of us does something different and we all have something different to offer.”

Owen’s farm — established in 2010 — has approximately 6,000 plants of the English Lavender variety, and the farm produces numerous lavender-themed oils, food items, plants and other goods.

The English Lavender Farm will include live entertainment from local musicians such as The Brothers Reed, Jeff Kloetzel, and Frankie Hernandez, along with dozens of local vendors selling food, beverages and all kinds of artisanal goods and crafts during the festival’s June dates.

“All of the people that have come are local, so all of the vendors and all of the artists; they’re all in the local community,” she said of the festival’s local-centric focus.

Other forms of entertainment include a face painter and a booth for the Applegate Wine Trail, a collaborating organization, at Owen’s farm.

The five other participating lavender farms will have plenty of fun to check out as well.

Organizers encourage festival-goers to visit each of the six farms throughout June and July and are offering lavender “passports” to stamp each of their six visits to be eligible for the annual lavender gift basket raffle.

Farm visitors will have an abundance of time to receive a stamp from each of their visits, with the deadline to submit passports for the raffle being July 31.

The raffle basket includes numerous goodies donated by each participating lavender farm.

“We all put in six or seven different products that we make and the winner can walk away with a big basket of 40 or 50 products,” Owen said.

Those products include plants, lotions, jams, soaps and other lavender-related products.

On 2023’s raffle basket, “It must’ve been filled with hundreds of dollars worth of products and it was beautiful,” Owen said.

The Lavender Festival drew 700 to 800 daily visitors last year with a wide range of attendees from families to couples to solo lavender fans.

“We have a lot of families come out during the festival particularly; people come out in packed cars,” Owen said.

Lavender cultivators are predicting a solid lavender harvest as well.

“I think we should have a good harvest; I think if we hadn’t had that snow in March then we would’ve had a great harvest,” Owen said. “We measure it in terms of the quantity and the quality of the oil we get from the plants.”

For further details, including a full schedule of participating farms planned activities, visit southernoregonlavendertrail.com/lavender-farms.