Bees and lavender are a natural combination. When the weather was warm, the fields of lavender at Lila Avery-Fuson’s family farm hummed.
“Basically, the bees own the lavender. We just get to borrow it when it’s cool,” she said.
The 7-acre farm was known for hosting you-pick events before the summer heat in Paso Robles fully kicked in. Avery-Fuson remembers stocking plenty of EpiPens for severe reactions, but the bees were usually so intoxicated from the lavender that they just bumped into people rather than stinging them.
Recipes galore
To buy Central Coast Lavender products online and learn more about The Lavender Academy, visit centralcoastlavender.com. Follow @centralcoastlavender on Instagram for updates and recipe ideas.
Five years ago, her business, Central Coast Lavender, experienced many losses, including the majority of the friendly buzzing insects. The founder pivoted after the pandemic, scaling down acreage and selling directly to consumers rather than continuing wholesale. With the help of a few family members, Avery-Fuson still sells home goods and lavender products online from flowers that she distills.
Last fall she started an educational program called The Lavender Academy to teach small growers all about the plant, from the medicinal benefits to how to monetize their crops. She said information about the online course will be available on her website for this year’s spring session, set to begin in March.
“I love my position now as a mentor and an educator and a formulator,” she said. “I think I find more joy in helping others through teaching them how to start from the ground up and how not to make the same mistakes that I had to make three or four times to get it right.”
Since planting the first crops on her Paso Robles farm in 2007, Avery-Fuson has assumed a prominent role in the local and national lavender industry. She founded the Central Coast Lavender Growers Association almost 20 years ago as the state’s first nonprofit lavender group. In 2011 Avery-Fuson was a founding member of a similar organization at the national level.
“I feel extraordinarily blessed to have been the first one to dive off that top and build my wings on the way down and be able to be one of the pioneers in the lavender industry of the United States,” she said. “I can’t believe I was.”
After convincing the Paso Robles City Council, she got the Central Coast Lavender Festival up and running with the help of Norma Moye, who passed away in December last year. Since the pandemic, the festival has included local olives and is now known as the Paso Robles Olive and Lavender Festival.
Of all the ways to use lavender in the kitchen, Avery-Fuson’s favorite is to incorporate the buds into shortbread cookies. Her recipe uses a lot of butter and lemon zest. The cookies made a good snack for farm visitors when Avery-Fuson hosted tours.
“I would always have lavender lemonade and lavender shortbread cookies for after they walked the fields and came up and wanted to go shopping in my farm store,” she recalled.
Avery-Fuson’s wealth of online recipes spell out just the right combination of ingredients to use dried lavender in lemon bars, jams, simple syrups, chocolate marshmallows, scones, butter, and beverages.
Another treasured recipe in her household is lavender and mint tea steeped in coconut cream instead of water.
“It’s so good,” Avery-Fuson said. “It’s a nighttime drink, and it helps you sleep, too.”
She doesn’t want people to forget the plant’s uses as a medicinal herb, either. Lavender has anti-inflammatory and anti-nausea properties as well as therapeutic benefits for relaxation, the grower explained.
Over the years she’s learned a lot about the scientific and agricultural principles of planting lavender. At the end of the day, it’s a crop, she explained, that loves the Central Coast’s Mediterranean climate just like grapes and olives.
French lavender, a hybrid species, yields three times as much oil as the English variety and is used to make essential oils. English lavender is recommended for culinary uses. Depending on the species, lavender can bloom between April and July. Each year’s harvest depends on the weather, water, soil, and sunlight.
Avery-Fuson’s family history in Paso Robles dates back to the mid-1800s. She remembers her grandmother making lavender tea and salves to treat “melancholy.” Yet it wasn’t until the early 2000s that the business founder started her own lavender journey.
A genetic degenerative brain disease diagnosis led Avery-Fuson to lavender’s natural remedies. By learning more about the plant, she found her own purpose again, using it as fuel for Central Coast Lavender.
“It changed my outlook from being a victim of a diagnosis to putting me on a mission of owning it and turning around my health,” Avery-Fuson said.
Despite today’s scaled-down production, she’s found a new way to grow the business by spreading her knowledge. There aren’t as many bees buzzing around her farm, but the industry’s hum is still loud.
Staff Writer Madison White’s favorite color is purple. Send flowers to mwhite@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in February 12 – February 19, 2026.