Begle Ridge Herb Farm

Yesterday I attended the annual Beagle Ridge Herb Farm Lavender and Thyme luncheon and garden tour. This "farm" is also a haven for insects and butterflies and is totally pesticide free. It's also a demonstration garden as the owner (Ellen) does environmental education for multiple Va. counties, is master garden, and beside all that a really nice lady.  I ran into two of my neighbors there too so we had a nice time together at lunch.

They have a butterfly house (Flying Flowers) and had an event on Mother's day to let people release butterflies.  At our event we got to see a cycle of butterflies who had emerged from their pupae and were almost ready to take off. Ellen let those that wanted be grabbed by a butterfly as they tried out their wings. Only two actually took off and the others were gently encouraged to move to a bush to finish drying their wings. There are 6 varieties of butterflies in the house and they have gone through many cycles already as most butterflies that has laid its eggs only live a few more weeks. The pictures here are of Monarch butterflies. The Pupae almost look like jade- aren't they something?

The gardens are not manicured in anyway which I love! She calls it a Mediterranean garden as it's very arid and is totally built on "dirty rock" lots of stones.   Thyme grows everywhere and you can walk on it and not harm it. Most things are left to grow where they are found- i.e. where birds drop them. As long as some bug or butterfly likes that plant and it doesn't stop there being walkways or injure other plants, Ellen is happy to have it there.

She does grow a lot of lavender (many kinds) and makes many items from her lavender. She also uses them to demonstrate to others how to grow, harvest, propagate, and prune lavender correctly. Deer don't like lavender either and so they have surrounded the farm property with lavender as the back up onto much wooded acreage.  First picture shows a few of the lavenders and the other shows more of the butterfly friendly plants.

 On the way home I picked blueberries - no pictures - but I picked a gallon. Decided the price for "already picked blueberries" will be worth spending the next time unless I have some friends or  relatives with me!! You'd have to pay me a lot more to do that picking more than once a year!
  Now I have to decide what to do with them besides just plain good eating. And things that take no oven as looks like I won't have one of those for about 3 weeks!