A scented journey
To the lavender fields, by Suyin Haynes
There are lavender fields close to where I live. We stumbled across them, recently planted, as we were exploring the local footpaths before we moved here. Every year we head up there with the dogs as the aromatic, magical, medicinal herb comes into bloom and the fields turn a dreamlike purple. It’s become a special, annual, summer marker - one of several flowering high points that punctuate the calendar and underline the passing of the seasons and the years.
Having grown quite sentimental about it, I can well understand how the recurrent event touches the emotions. It’s bittersweet, as all fleeting beauty is, and it’s a full body experience.
Today Suyin Haynes shares with us what lavender and a visit to her nearby fields evokes for her. I’m touched that she has chosen to tell such a personal story of her relationship with this healing herb and it’s an honour to provide a home for it here on Radicle.
To the lavender fields, by Suyin Haynes
For the last three years, my parents and I have made a visit to our nearest lavender farm around late June, early July. It’s a kind of pilgrimage; one of a few rituals we started during the disorientation of 2020. We set off in the morning, taking the train from Bromley South to Shoreham - a small village nestled on the northwestern edge of Kent, in the Darent Valley.
Turn right out of the station, walk up a road shaded by a canopy of tree tops, and we see green fields neighbouring the path and the curves of hills visible in the distance. I pull up a PDF with the directions on my phone, partly out of anxiety that I’ll lead us the wrong way, partly because it has familiar trivia about the area that I’ll read out, pretending as if I’m doing a guided tour for the first time.
We walk through Shoreham’s village, then trail alongside a river before reaching an expanse of rippling yellow wheat fields. We gravitate towards the hops on the horizon, swaying as if they were a mirage. Their appearance signifies that we’re on the home stretch to approaching Castle Farm; once we cross the border of hops, we can see the rows of lavender planted two metres apart on the sloping hill to the right.
The youngest lavender plant on this family-run farm was planted in 2011, and the Darent Valley is home to some of the UK’s largest lavender producers. The chalky soils in the area make it the perfect environment for a plant that requires much patience. And whether it’s due to the calming aroma, the Instagrammable aesthetic, or the fact that the flowers are only in full bloom for a few short weeks in late June to early July (or perhaps a combination of all three), every time we visit seems busier than the last.
The farm also runs guided tours, where we learn about the distillation process, and the difference between lavender and lavandin; the former contains more relaxing properties, and the latter more stimulating. There are subtle distinctions between the flower heads and stems of both plants that I never appreciated until looking up close.
The scent of lavender has been a constant presence throughout my life, and so it’s quite fitting that it re-emerged in the form of this annual visit during the pandemic and all the uncertainty that accompanied it. I have always associated the scent, that calming balance of floral sweetness without being overpoweringly sickly, with my childhood. It makes sense then, that I would look to it to guide me through difficult times.
When I was five years old in 2000, my brother Jonathan died suddenly, at the age of 20. It was deeply traumatic, for many reasons that I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to write about or share. To try and describe the impact of this loss is an impossible challenge; a Herculean task for any writer to capture the exuberance, humour and beauty of a whole life within the limits of words. Perhaps one day, with more years behind me, I may try - but now, I’m not there.
Jonathan’s death changed mine, my mother’s and my father’s lives irrevocably. In what I think is a result of that trauma, I’m unable to remember very much of being a child; both before and after 25 April, 2000. What I do remember enduring throughout that time is the scent of lavender.
I regularly had trouble sleeping, and often would go into my parents’ room in the middle of the night, laying out our futon cushion on the floor at the foot of their bed. My mum would put drops of lavender essential oil on my pillow. It often stained the white pillowcases with beige circles, darkening at the edges where the oil had decided to stop travelling, satisfied with the mark it made.
As I grew older into the years of secondary school, I carried a small bottle of lavender essential oil with me. I would dab a few drops on the sleeves of my dark green jumper before taking exams or doing anything that might be slightly anxiety-inducing. The fact that the sleeves of my jumpers always became worn, threads unravelling and spooling to become strings disembodied from the arms, perhaps says something about the kind of environment the school was, or the type of disposition I had as a teenager (or both).
There are clear links between scent, memory and emotion; explored through literature ranging from the works of Virginia Woolf to Nigel Slater. While doing some reading in preparation for this piece, I came across this article about attempts to recreate a 200-year old specific scent combination of pot pourri at Knole House—also in Kent, not too far from Shoreham—based on a description of the smell outlined in the diaries of Vita Sackville-West. I thought about how meaningful it is to yearn for a scent so much to want to recreate it, to chase after something so notoriously difficult to describe. We can often say how a scent makes us feel and what it reminds us of, but trying to describe its essence, how it really smells, is yet another way in which words can sometimes be limiting.
I think part of the allure of the lavender fields is that they are out in flower for such a short time; dependent, of course, on the season that’s preceded and ever unpredictable climate patterns. It’s hard to know exactly when the fields will darken into a deep purple hue before they’re harvested; so bright that from a distance, the rows of plants look like vertical columns of violet paint, and the smell so strong that up close, the air vibrates with the flutter of bee and wasp wings, attracted to the flowering heads.
For me, the light, floral scent of lavender first brings back memories of hot tears and restless nights. But as I inhale through the opening note and into more sweetness, I’m reminded of persevering through those times; of my mum’s gentle persistence too. And with the herbal undertones, I’m brought back into the present; the lingering smell a reminder of where I’ve been.
Even though we’ve walked through the fields the past three summers, and gone on the tour twice, there’s a comfort in the familiarity of retreading the same ground, feeling the powdery soil slip slightly beneath our soles. As we plan our trip again in the coming days, I look forward to feeling grounded again.
Suyin Haynes is a London-based writer and freelance journalist. She was previously Head of Editorial at gal-dem, and before that, reported for TIME magazine in London and Hong Kong. Subscribe to her forthcoming newsletter, Ginkgo Leaves, here.
Suyin is being paid for this article.
Photo credits: Suyin Haynes
What a powerful and evocative piece - I read it three times before commenting, and will no doubt come back to Suyin’s words again. It is a gift to be such a quality storyteller through deep and painful emotions and allow others to find solace in words. Thank you 🙏🏾💕