Carshalton Lavender, an award-winning heritage community project, opens its gates to the public at its 20th Open Weekend on 27th and 28th July from 10am until 4pm both days. This popular community harvest, and London’s only Pick Your Own Lavender event, will be held at the three acre Carshalton Lavender field, which is part of the Stanley Road Allotment site behind the Day Centre on Oaks Way, SM5 4NQ. It can be reached from Stanley Park Road via Balfour Road. It is advisable to travel by public transport as parking in neighbouring residential roads is very limited: only disabled parking is available on site. For a map and full details of the event, visit our website www.carshaltonlavender.org.
As well as picking their own lavender, visitors will be able to enjoy hot food, visit stalls selling lavender related products, buy lavender plants and have aromatherapy and reflexology treatments from qualified practitioners. A charge is made for the picked lavender. The lavender harvest is an excellent opportunity for taking photos of friends and family in a beautiful outdoor setting. There will also be some activities for younger visitors and their families.
This weekend is the main opportunity for buying our Carshalton Heritage Lavender products, which contain our essential oil harvested from the field. We do not, and never have had, a shop, so take care not to confuse us with any commercial or retail sites using very similar names to ours. Apart from the Harvest Weekend, other ways of obtaining our products are noted on our website, where a small number of official stockists and producers who use our oil in their products are listed
Carshalton Lavender has been distilling its own lavender essential oil ever since the harvest events started, and have done this on the field since 2009. The still will be in operation over the weekend and there will be opportunities to see demonstrations of the distillation process.
In the early 1900s, blue fields of lavender could be seen all over Carshalton, Wallington, Mitcham, Waddon and Sutton. The Carshalton Lavender project aims to revive and maintain the heritage of this local lavender for future generations. The lavender plants grown on the field are all from cuttings taken from the lavender originally grown in the area. This is a unique feature of our field. The project is run solely by volunteers, and proceeds from this harvest event keep the project running from year to year. New volunteers are always welcome to join. See website for details.
