Sequim Lavender Festival
Three-day celebration of Sequim's lavender industry in the Olympic Peninsula's rain shadow — 200+ vendors, farm tours, cut-your-own fields, and the largest lavender festival in North America.
About the event
Sequim (pronounced "Skwim") lies in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains and receives only 16 inches of annual rainfall — a remarkable anomaly on a peninsula where nearby areas receive 80 to 120 inches. This dry, sunny microclimate is nearly ideal for commercial lavender production, and since the 1990s Sequim has grown into the lavender capital of North America, with over 30 working lavender farms on the Dungeness plain. The Sequim Lavender Festival, held each July during peak bloom, is billed as the largest lavender festival in North America and draws upward of 30,000 visitors over the three-day weekend.
The festival operates on two tracks. A free street fair in downtown Sequim fills several blocks with 200+ vendors selling food, crafts, lavender products (essential oils, sachets, body care, culinary lavender), and Pacific Northwest artisan goods. Separately, a self-guided farm tour circuit — the Lavender Farm Passport — allows visitors to drive between participating farms, explore the fields in bloom, cut their own lavender bundles, and buy directly from growers. Farm tours typically include demonstrations of distillation, bundle-making, and lavender cooking. Some farms offer additional ticketed events such as yoga in the lavender fields or chef dinners.
Peak lavender bloom in Sequim is remarkably consistent: the third week of July, when the festival is deliberately scheduled, reliably coincides with the fullest and most aromatic point of the growing season. Fields in bloom — long rows of purple, blue, and white varieties stretching to the horizon against the backdrop of the Olympic Mountains — are one of the most visually compelling agricultural landscapes in the Pacific Northwest.
What to expect
The downtown street fair is free to enter and runs Friday through Sunday. It is densely attended on Saturday afternoon — arrive before 10 a.m. or plan for significant crowds at the lavender vendor booths. The farm tour is self-guided, and a Passport booklet listing all participating farms with maps is available at the festival information booth and online. Farms are spread across a roughly 10-mile radius and range from small artisan operations to large commercial growers with extensive fields open to the public. Many farms allow dogs on leash.
Cut-your-own lavender is one of the festival's most popular activities — farms provide scissors and bundles are priced by stem count. Arrive at farms early for the best selection of varieties. Distillation demonstrations (where farms run steam distillation to produce essential oil from fresh-cut lavender) are scheduled at several farms and are fascinating to watch. The festival also includes lavender-themed cooking demonstrations, children's craft activities, and garden talks on growing lavender in Pacific Northwest conditions.