New BI lavender farm bridges mental health and foraging

The field in front of Stephanie Leong’s Bainbridge Island home is full of vibrant purple spikes that bounce gently with the weight of bumblebees. Downslope, maples and hemlock rise from a green thicket, and a chorus of birdsong brightens the air. When the breeze blows, deep breaths become tinged with a sweet, fresh scent that calms the nerves.

This is Bluetree Lavender Farm, a combination of a mental health support project, ecological preserve, culinary farm and event space, now reaching its first year of planting. Having a four-pronged mission statement may seem ambitious, but Leong says that peace of mind is at the heart of each goal.

“We wanted to do something with agriculture, to facilitate people’s connection with land. We wanted a place for families to come and just be and learn about nature,” Leong said. “We knew we wanted a perrenial, and lavender just felt right.”

Lavender floriculture is popular on the Olympic Peninsula, but Bluetree is the first lavender farm on the island since at least the early 2000s, Leong said. Her initial crop came from starts propagated from plants in Sequim of a lavender variety typically used to make essential oils: French Grosso. The first year is intended to get the lay of the land, Leong explained — in the future, she hopes to focus on culinary lavender, which can be used in recipes or made into syrups.

There’s over 40 strains of lavender, and the difference is noticeable, Leong said. The French Grosso, a deeper violet color, is “soapy,” she described, whereas the lighter-colored English strain, Ms. Catherine, is “camphorous” and “astringent.”

Ms. Catherine’s curtain call is sooner than you’d think, Leong said. Bluetree’s first public event Aug. 10 is a collaboration between the farm and local catering business Fig & Spice and will be a dinner highlighting the versatility of culinary lavender. Leong hinted at talks already in progress with several local businesses, including Briny Bagels and Hitchcock Cafe.

But florals are not the only culinary products that Leong hopes to share.

When searching for a place for her family to live on Bainbridge, Leong had a few unconventional priorities in mind. For starters, she needed a wide, sunny plot of land for the lavender; but for seconds, she also wanted an undeveloped forest. She found exactly what she was looking for, and got to work — but the real discovery came with a local ecologist’s assessment.

The back acre of the Leong family farm was home to a uniquely healthy and diverse foraging forest fed by a riparian corridor. Salmonberry, huckleberry, red elderberry, wild cherries, Oregon plum and trailing blackberry grow in a tangle almost 12 feet high in places, and a natural wetland feeds an understory of horsetail and skunk cabbage, towered by mossy bigleaf maples, Douglas fir and western hemlock.

Leong saw a connection between her farm’s goals and what the foraging forest could represent — a way to show guests how their time in nature could enrich both their bodies and minds.

“I’ve always had an interest in forestry — I took some classes for it in college. I think it’s essential to our mental health to be outside, among plants,” Leong said. Today, she works as a child psychiatrist. “My hope is to move into culinary products with native plants.”

Together, Leong and her husband carefully wove a path through the woods, pulling invasives and pruning back growth. The forest provided everything, Leong said. They cut fallen logs they encountered to line the trail, layered sticks and island-sourced woodchips to create a “corduroy” effect that allows water to flow beneath the path, and used large trees as guides for the layout of the trail.

“It was surprisingly fast. We came through [the first third] in a day,” she said. “We’ve been trying to do as many regenerative practices as possible.”

The final touch comes from the blue tree itself.

A small trail off of the main path leads to a thin tree painted royal blue. It’s an official Blue Tree, a global project that aims to destigmatize mental health by the Australian nonprofit of the same name. The organization began when a group of friends in western Australia chose to paint a nearby dead tree blue, just for fun, using old house paint they found in their garage. The rich, dark color stood out against the rusty Australian outback and became a local landmark. In 2018, the group lost a member to suicide; in his honor, they founded the Blue Tree Project, which uses blue trees to spark conversation about mental health with family members.

Leong heard about the project through her work and knew it had a place on the island.

“I tell everyone this: nutrition, exercise, and time outside. It’s what you do in all the hours of the day that matters,” she said. “Noticing different bird sounds, touching plants and the earth, and choosing not to stare at a screen or stay inside all day — those decisions matter, and has a huge impact on your mental health.”