A couple of weeks ago, I went to The Fragrances of Ireland HQ in Co Wicklow to visit its lavender field, beside the busy N11 dual carriageway. I was feeling somewhat muzzy and sluggish about the brain, but I got an unexpected, fragrant kick-start when I stepped first into a room where clinical, white cupboards were filled with bottles of essential plant-oils.
I had entered the perfume company's inner sanctum to inhale the distillations of last year's lavender harvest, and to detect the surprising differences between the several varieties: `Munstead' (sweet, sharp and apple-ish), `Miss Katherine' (astringent hints of benzene with an undercurrent of over-ripe fruit), `Royal Purple' (less lavendery, more subtle), `Imperial Gem' (even more delicate again). After repeated sniffs - each one a miniature volatile explosion along the respiratory tract - my head had miraculously cleared.
Later on, I read that the 16th-century English herbalist, William Turner, had pronounced that lavender "helpeth the dulness of the head". If only I'd known that it also repels "midges, mosquitoes and flies" (according to the Australian, Dorothy Hall), I would have anointed myself with a precious drop or two before setting foot in the two-and-a-half-acre lavender field. There, in the enchanting, bucolic setting - edged by old lime trees crowded around a little stream, and overlooked by the grey bulk of the Great Sugar Loaf mountain - I was eaten alive by voracious Wicklow midges.
Fortunately, the horticultural manager, 21-year-old Cathal MacOireachtaigh, is largely untroubled by the little biters. And the 6,750 lavender bushes, which throw a purple-ribbed corduroy cloth across the Kilmacanogue clay, are not bothered by pests either. "They have a natural insecticide, so there's no problem with slugs, or most other pests," claims MacOireachtaigh. The only unwelcome creatures are the frog hoppers - small spring-loaded, bouncing insects - who make their frothy, spitty homes on the stems.
All the lavender in the field ("the only one in Ireland that we know of," says David Cox, managing director of Fragrances of Ireland) is grown organically. An ideal plant for this method, it is a lean feeder and requires nothing more than a well-drained, preferably alkaline soil in full sun to produce its romantically-charged spikes of pungent flowers. "If you want to," advises MacOireachtaigh, "you can dress it in spring, before the flower buds form, with something high in potassium, like wood ash or Seagreen K" - calcified seaweed with rock potash. "Or, you could do it in August, after harvesting. In Jersey," - where there is a large lavender farm - "they've tried mulching it with seaweed. I'd like to try that, but I wouldn't use seaweed from the east coast."
Peak flowering time in Co Wicklow is late June and July, and harvesting - of both stems and blooms - is carried out during the latter month when the buds are fully open. Last year, 10 tons of material were processed in a shiny, important-looking still.
After much burbling and steaming and condensing, they yielded just four litres of pale-yellow, aromatic oil. Not a lot, it's true, but enough to be spread thinly through a number of lavender products. And enough to precipitate the launch this July of a new aromatherapy range of floral waters and potions for massage and bath. But not enough to satisfy the ultimate needs of the perfume company, which hopes to eventually plant up another few purple-corded acres behind the original field.
Most of the lavender under Cathal MacOireachtaigh's care is the popular Lavandula angustifolia `Munstead'. A compact, free-flowering English lavender, it was selected around 1914 by the renowned plantswoman, Gertrude Jekyll, and named after her house, Munstead Wood. Both `Munstead' and another dwarf type, `Hidcote', make good candidates for lavender hedges, says MacOireachtaigh. `Royal Purple', meanwhile, is "good for cutting. It has long flower-heads and stems, and holds its scent and colour." `Miss Katherine', on the other hand "is not great for cutting, but it is a lovely, cottagey plant with deep-pink flowers and greener foliage than most. It contrasts well with other lavenders."
Traditionally, lavender is used to border paths, or to edge beds of hybrid tea roses, where it hides their bony legs from view. The great British gardener, Christopher Lloyd, however, does not approve. Lavender's non-performing, "forlorn" period (from sometime in August until May, when the new growth appears) is far too long. "It is," he writes in his classic book, The Well-Tempered Garden, "one of our most cherished eyesores, only less drab than the thorny sticks that it so often encloses."
But the final say must go to Cathal MacOireachtaigh, who reminds us that lavender's sweet, nostalgic scent may linger long after the shrubs have gone for their prolonged out-of-season nap. "You can hang it in the wardrobe, or put the flowerheads in a light sock and stuff it in your pillow. Or," he adds helpfully, "you can put it in your undie drawer."
A website for Fragrances of Ireland's aromatherapy products will be online from July at: www.aromatherap.ie
Jane Powers can be contacted at: jpowers@irish-times.ie