Business features

Yuulong Lavender Estate’s Edythe Anderson and Rosemary Holmes first met in the 1960s while working at the Jessie McPherson Maternity Hospital in Melbourne. A decade later, the two good friends looked into buying an investment property together.

“Edythe wanted to invest in a bit of land by the sea,” Rosemary explained, “but then we saw the 20 acres at Mt Egerton and that was it”.

Yuulong Lavender Estate’s current status as one of the area’s most successful businesses and tourist attractions was evolutionary. The Mt Egerton property was purchased for $20,000 in 1980, initially as an investment, a place to fire up a pot belly stove, to visit with friends on the weekend “as a place to have fun”.

“But it got too cold during winter, so we built an 8.5 square house,” Rosemary said with another hearty laugh. “I needed my electric blanket”!

“We then needed to find a way to maintain the property, to keep the grass down.” Rosemary had grown up on a 3,000-acre sheep and cattle property and felt livestock was too hard to manage. “Lavender is a pretty, aromatic herb that is very drought tolerant. All you have to do is keep the weeds down, harvest once year, then prune and lime in the autumn.”

“In the 1980s we could not buy 100 lavender plants in Australia. Lavender was not fashionable back then and the plants had to be imported from overseas.”

After clearing the thick blackberry bushes and bracken away by hand, a group of 13 mainly nursing friends arrived one morning in 1982 to plant 1,000 lavender plants. The friends were rewarded with wining and dining in the evening. In 1983, 21 friends arrived on the property early one morning and planted 2,000 plants within four hours, followed once more by an evening of wining and dining.

“Now all the propagating is done on farm. We have 20,000 plants with 120 different varieties and have not watered any plants in the ensuing years.”

In 1983, Rosemary and Edythe purchased the neighbouring 20-acre block of land for the drought-reduced price of $17,000. Over the following years they built two dams, a nursery complex, craft shop, tearooms, added an extra room and an office to the main house.

Yuulong’s expansive purple and blue fields of lavender were in full bloom by 1985. Locals and curious travellers were taking notice, keen to look inside the Yuulong gates. A small story in The Age and an article in the Ballarat Courier was all it took to attract 2,000 people to the property on the first ‘open weekend’ in December 1985.

Today, Yuulong is open to the public Wednesday to Sunday from October to April. Large signs on the Western Freeway catch the eye of passers-by. Coach loads of international tourists visit Yuulong during the peak blooming season in summer.

The two former nurses – Rosemary has been full-time at Yuulong since 1989 and Edythe since 1996 – embraced all business opportunities which came Yuulong’s way.

The Yuulong Lavender and Aromatherapy Centre shops were established based on advice from an initial business plan. A Port Fairy shop ran from 1991-2006 – another was operating until recently in trendy Daylesford. The annual Harvesting and Music Festival began in 1985 and has continued ever since. Development of lavender skincare products and a craft range began in the 1980s, culinary products soon followed.

“We have 12 local part-time staff and about 10 people making craft for us.” Rosemary said. “We do not buy anything from overseas. The Ballan Red Cross has a number of good sewers and sometimes helps us out with big orders.”

The industry accolades soon started arriving, including TV coverage on Burke’s Backyard, ABC Gardening Australia and recently on Better Homes and Gardens, as well as coverage in various high-profile magazines. The Ornamental Plant Collections Australia (OPCA), based at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, asked Yuulong to hold the National Collection of Lavenders in 1987, and subsequently named their ‘Yuulong’ and ‘Mt Egerton’ lavenders.

Rosemary was runner-up in both the Women Chiefs of Enterprise International in 1994, and the Telstra Business Woman of the Year in 1995. Yuulong also won awards at the Royal Melbourne Show and the Canberra Royal Show, which they saw as extremely beneficial to the business.

Rosemary’s seminars on the growing and production of lavender gained a strong following of lavender growers. With assistance from the Economic Development Officer at the Moorabool Shire, the 450-strong list of potential lavender growers turned into the formation of The Australian Lavender Growers’ Association, launched at Yuulong in 1993, by the Minister for Agriculture.

The Moorabool Shire Council also helped host a visit by the Lavender Club of Japan, each group exchanging traditional gifts.

Rosemary manages Yuulong’s day-to-day activities and the skincare range, while Edythe manages the e-commerce activities. They recognise that the business world has changed considerably in the past decade. Closing the shop in Daylesford now allows Edythe to focus on the company’s website and on-line shopping.

“Closing the shops was a sensible thing for us to do,” Rosemary explained. “This is the era of technology. A lot of our orders are coming through on-line, particularly for export. You have to keep planning ahead.”