SEQUIM — Visitors get a double shot of lavender love today through Sunday at the 15th Sequim Lavender Festival and the new, separate Sequim Lavender Farm Faire.
The two festivals will give lavender lovers more to see, feel, hear and smell — from lavender arts and crafts, gourmet food and beverages to an expanded lineup of entertainment.
Unseasonably cold and wet weather has set back the area’s lavender crop, but there still should be plenty of the fragrant purple plants in bloom for the thousands of visitors expected at both festivals.
The Sequim Lavender Festival opens its Street Fair, with music, arts and crafts and food booths, on Fir Street, just west of North Sequim Avenue in central Sequim, at 9 a.m. today.
This festival also offers a free, self-guided tour of seven lavender farms.
The Sequim Lavender Farm Faire, the new festival operating simultaneously this weekend, requires paid admission for visits to seven other farms.
The Faire’s “Lavender in the Park” food and crafts fair at Carrie Blake Park and the adjacent Water Reuse Demonstration Site — on North Blake Avenue on the east side of Sequim — begins at 10 a.m. today.
(Get farm tour maps at both festival fairs and online at www.tinyurl.com/pdnlavender.)
The Sequim Lavender Festival officially opens with Mayor Ken Hays at 11 a.m. today at the Street Fair on Fir Street, followed by gardening expert Ed Hume.
The new Faire event opens at Carrie Blake Park at noon with Mayor Hays and Kiyokazu Ota, consul general of Japan. Ota is visiting Sequim with Kiyotaka Kochi, consul for economic-agricultural affairs, at Hays’ invitation.
Sequim has a sister city relationship with Shiso City, Japan, and the Shiso Sister City Friendship Garden is at the entrance to Carrie Blake Park.
The two-venue lavender weekend this year is the result of a breakup within the original Sequim Lavender Growers Association in January over philosophical and administrative differences.
Event promoter Scott Nagel, who was with the original growers association for six years, left to join the new Sequim Lavender Farmers Association and create the
Farm Faire.
Mary Lou Jendrucko stepped in as Sequim Lavender Festival director.
The original Sequim Lavender Festival, now in its 15th year, stresses “U-pick, U-tour, U-free admission . . . free admission all three days.”
The Farm Fair’s paid admission farm tour stresses workshops, music and cooking demonstrations at each of its farms.
Its “Lavender in the Park” fair is free.
Both groups are trying to avoid confusion, promoting each event separately.
Jendrucko said the split into two separate festivals will give visitors more choices this year.
“I don’t think the average visitor is going to care,” Jendrucko said.
“They will go to one and like it or not, and if they don’t like it, then they will go to the other.”
Jendrucko and Nagel both said Web traffic on their respective sites — www.lavenderfestival.com and www.sequimlavenderfarms.org — is through the roof with thousands of views from all over the world.
“We’re really trying to get the word out through our marketing that this is the lavender weekend and there are two festivals,” Nagel said.
“We are saying check out the difference between them and see there’s more things to do.”
Jendrucko said the Sequim Lavender Festival this year re-embraces nonprofit organizations, inviting them back to its popular Fir Street Street Fair.
“This is an event for the entire Sequim-Dungeness Valley, not just us,” she said.
Among the nonprofits exhibiting will be the Lions Club, Boys & Girls Clubs and Future Farmers of America.
“They get the booth for free, and whatever they can make, they can make,” Jendrucko said.
Parking for the original Street Fair will be available near its east Fir Street entrance on North Sequim Avenue at the Olympic Theatre Arts Center, which will accept donations.
Farms on the Sequim Lavender Festival’s free self-guided lavender farm tour are Blackberry Forest, Nelson’s Duckpond & Lavender Farm, Oliver’s Lavender Farm,
The Lavender Connection, Lost Mountain Lavender, Martha Lane Lavender and Peninsula Nurseries Inc.
Regional attractions connected to the Sequim Lavender Festival tour include Nash’s Organic Produce, Olympic Game Farm, Dungeness Valley Creamery and Graysmarsh Farm.
The addition of an antique, classic and custom car show will highlight this year’s Sequim Lavender Festival Street Fair.
Sponsored by Peninsula Dream Machines and the Sequim Valley Car Club, the event will donate 100 percent of its proceeds to Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula.
Some 200 cars are expected. (See related story today.)
At Carrie Blake Park, Lavender in the Park will present Creme Tangerine, a Beatles tribute band, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. tonight in the James Center bandshell, followed by a second 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. concert on Saturday.
(A full rundown on music at both festivals is in Peninsula Spotlight, the Peninsula Daily News’ entertainment section today.)
Farm Faire tickets provide unlimited admission to all seven of its farms on tour: Cedarbrook Lavender & Herb Farm, Jardin du Soleil Lavender Farm, Olympic Lavender Farm, Port Williams Lavender, Purple Haze Lavender, Sunshine Herb & Lavender Farm and Washington Lavender Farm.
Nagel said the farms can be toured by car as well, but the bus tour is intended to get motorists off the road and reduce the stress of driving.
Nagel announced that Jardin du Soleil Lavender Farm has been added late to the farm tour “as a limited-edition farm.”
“We thought people would want to go and visit them,” Nagel said of the Dungeness farm owned by Pam and Rand Nicholson.
“This will probably be their last summer on tour.”
Jardin du Soleil remains open but has been up for sale, and the family had personal commitments in Colorado and did not anticipate opening for the festival, Nagel said.
The Lavender Farm Faire will offer with each ticket a souvenir “Lavender Passport.”
Collect a stamp from at least three Farms on Tour and Lavender in the Park at Carrie Blake Park, then complete and turn in the entry form to be entered into a drawing for prizes.
The new Lavender Farm Faire during the three-day event presents a parking lot party downtown at the Garden Bistro, North Sequim Avenue at Washington Street.
Nagel said the venue was created to satisfy downtown merchants who were afraid that the split between the two lavender groups would hurt their business.
Sequim Lavender Farm Faire information, poster and tickets to the farm tour will also be available at the Garden Bistro parking lot party from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. today and Saturday, and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.
Each of the Sequim Lavender Farm Faire farms will have room for between 200 and 500 parking spaces to handle the thousands expected, and each farm will be managed as its own self-contained event.
“Our farms are all festivals,” he said.
________
Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
