How Lavender Took Root in Woodinville
The History Snippet…
Lavender may look as though it has always belonged in the Sammamish Valley, but it is one of Woodinville’s newer agricultural chapters. Woodinville Lavender began taking shape along Woodinville-Redmond Road in 2008, and years later JB Family Growers expanded the story with roughly 15,000 lavender plants planted as part of its growing agritourism operation. From drained floodplain farms and nursery fields to pumpkins, flowers, and purple rows, lavender is the latest example of how Woodinville’s agricultural landscape keeps reinventing itself.
The Full Story…
On a warm summer day, lavender looks completely at home in the Sammamish Valley. Purple rows ripple in the breeze, bees drift from bloom to bloom, and visitors pause for photographs with armfuls of freshly cut flowers and when “the mountain is out”, Mount Rainier is a beautiful back drop to photos.
It is easy to imagine that lavender has always grown here.
It hasn’t.
Lavender is a relatively recent arrival in Woodinville, but it took root because of something much older: the valley’s long tradition of agriculture, adaptation, and people willing to try something new.
First, There Was the River
The valley itself looked very different from the orderly fields we recognize today. The Sammamish river—once commonly called Squak Slough—curved through a broad floodplain filled with wetlands, forested areas, side channels, sloughs, and seasonally flooded ground. During high water, so much of the valley could flood that early riverboat operators sometimes had difficulty finding the main channel.
Beginning in the late 1800s, settlers logged the surrounding forests and attempted to turn the wet valley floor into productive farmland. Drainage districts widened, cleared, deepened, and straightened portions of the river. When the Lake Washington Ship Canal was completed in 1917, Lake Washington dropped about nine feet and Lake Sammamish fell roughly six feet, allowing previously wet areas to be drained and cultivated. By 1938, most of the floodplain was being used for agriculture.
A federal flood-control project completed in 1964 deepened the river another five to ten feet in places to improve drainage and reduce spring flooding of cropland. These projects dramatically altered the river and its habitat, but they also helped create the agricultural landscape and rich valley soil on which the valley’s farms, nurseries—and eventually lavender fields—would grow.
A Valley That Knew How to Grow
For much of the twentieth century, the Sammamish Valley was a working agricultural landscape. Farmers raised livestock, vegetables, berries, flowers, and nursery plants. As the Eastside developed, many farms faced rising land values, suburban growth, and changing markets.
Agriculture did not simply disappear. It adapted.
Nurseries, wineries, seasonal farms, wedding venues, and visitor experiences found new ways to keep portions of the valley productive. That long-established farming culture paved the way for lavender: a crop that could preserve the appearance and use of agricultural land while also attracting visitors drawn to flowers, gardens, photography, and Woodinville Wine Country.
Lavender was not a continuation of an old local crop. It was a creative new use for a valley that had been reinventing itself for generations.
Woodinville’s First Well-Documented Lavender Farm
One of the earliest well-documented commercial lavender ventures in the Woodinville area began with an unexpected combination: farming and aerospace engineering.
In 2008, Tom and Brenda Frei decided they wanted to establish a lavender farm. Tom had grown up in a dry-land farming family near Pullman, but by then he had spent more than two decades working as an aerospace engineer. He still wanted to farm—just not on a massive scale or with a crop requiring extensive irrigation.
While searching for land, the couple spotted a three-acre property along Woodinville-Redmond Road. Rather than waiting for it to appear on the market, they knocked on the owners’ door and explained that they would be interested if the family ever decided to sell.
As it happened, the owners were reportedly about a week away from contacting a real-estate agent.
Sometimes history takes a grand plan. Sometimes it takes a well-timed knock on the door.
The Freis selected lavender for its hardiness and relative drought tolerance. They spent their first years improving the soil and experimenting with test beds before beginning to sell lavender at local farmers markets in 2010. By the summer of 2011, Woodinville Lavender had more than 1,000 plants representing about 25 varieties. The family offered fresh and dried lavender along with sachets, lotions, bath products, soaps, and oils.
The farm soon became more than a place where lavender was grown. Visitors came to cut their own bundles, explore the gardens, attend demonstrations, and enjoy seasonal events. By 2014, Woodinville Lavender was hosting an annual Lavender Festival featuring U-pick flowers and a variety of lavender products, foods, and activities.
Today, Woodinville Lavender continues on Woodinville-Redmond Road as a private wedding and event venue, with its lavender gardens providing the backdrop.
From Instant Lawn to Lavender Fields
A few miles away, another lavender story was quietly growing out of a very different agricultural business.
JB Instant Lawn traces its beginnings to Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where Paul Jensen and his brother started raising specialty grass seed in the early 1950s. The company expanded into sod production during the 1960s, helping introduce ready-to-install lawns to western markets.
By 1980, JB had established a strong Seattle-area market and reported approximately 300 acres of sod production in Redmond. The company added a wholesale nursery at the Washington location in 1996, supplying landscape plants throughout the Seattle area.
For years, JB’s valley operation was largely a behind-the-scenes business. It grew the lawns, trees, shrubs, and plants that appeared in landscapes elsewhere.
Then came the pumpkins.
JB promoted a public pumpkin patch at its Washington farm in 2021. By 2022, it was operating under the name JB Family Growers Pumpkin Farm and Puzzle Patch, inviting families directly onto the working farm.
And the visitors had a suggestion.
As families moved through the pumpkin patch, they repeatedly asked whether the farm might someday plant flowers. JB’s marketing and operations manager, Annabelle Nielsen, later recalled hearing the question again and again.
So the farm came up with a plan.
What happens when pumpkin-patch visitors keep requesting flowers?
Apparently, you plant 15,000 lavender plants.
JB added the lavender along with native wildflowers, creating a summer counterpart to its fall pumpkin experience. By August 2023, visitors were walking through the purple fields, watching bees and butterflies among the blossoms, and using baskets and clippers to gather their own bouquets.
The exact year the first lavender went into the ground has not yet surfaced in the published record, but the fields were open to the public by the 2023 season. Today, the lavender, wildflowers, sunflowers, flower market, pumpkin farm, and Puzzle Patch operate under the JB Family Growers identity, connected to the longtime JB Instant Lawn and nursery operation.
A New Crop in an Old Farming Story
Woodinville’s lavender farms are different in scale and character.
Woodinville Lavender began as a small family farm, growing more than two dozen varieties and creating handcrafted products before evolving into a private event venue. JB Family Growers introduced lavender on a larger scale as part of a working sod-and-nursery business expanding into seasonal agritourism.
Together, they tell a story larger than lavender.
They show how agriculture in the Sammamish Valley continues to change. Fields that once produced traditional crops or commercial landscape plants can also become places where people gather, learn, take photographs, pick flowers, celebrate milestones, and reconnect with the agricultural land around them.
Lavender did not replace the valley’s farming story.
It grew out of it.
And each summer, when the fields turn purple, Woodinville adds another colorful chapter to a landscape that has never stopped changing.
Sources
Woodinville Heritage Society Archives and Collections
King County, Sammamish River Corridor Action Plan: Final Report.
“Make the Most of Your Lavender Farm Visit,” Seattle Refined, July 16, 2014.
JB Instant Lawn, “Company History” and company announcements from 2021 and 2022.
Niku Kazori, “It’s Lavender Season at JB Family Growers in Woodinville,” KIRO 7 News, August 3, 2023.
