From our fields in Kent to the world of Creed

There’s something rather special about seeing a crop grown, harvested and distilled here at Castle Farm become part of a fragrance launched on the world stage.

In early September, we travelled to London for the launch of Creed’s new fragrance, Iris Debonair, where we spoke with media about our lavender, how it is grown and harvested, and what makes the oil produced here in the Darenth Valley so distinctive.

Then, just this week, we headed across the Channel to Paris to take part in the global launch event – a wonderful opportunity to talk about our farm, our lavender and the journey from field to fragrance on an international stage.

It’s something we’re incredibly proud of. But for us, it all starts much closer to home – in the soil beneath our feet.

So, what makes our lavender oil so special?

For Iris Debonair, Creed selected Maillette, one of the first lavender varieties we planted here at Castle Farm.

Maillette has a particularly soft and sophisticated fragrance and is the variety we use for our Premium Lavender Oil. It produces an oil with the refined, aromatic character that makes it so well suited to perfumery.

But the variety is only part of the story.

Our lavender grows in the chalky soils of the Darenth Valley, where the gently sloping ground provides naturally free-draining conditions. It is a combination of variety, soil, climate and careful cultivation that gives the lavender its distinctive character.

We harvest our Maillette for oil towards the end of July, when the plants have reached the right stage to capture the best of their aromatic qualities. Once cut, the lavender has very little distance to travel – our steam distillery is right here on the farm.

That means we can take the freshly harvested lavender from the field and have it in the distillery within around two hours.

There is something quite satisfying about that process. One minute you are looking across a field of lavender in the Kent sunshine; a short while later, the same crop is being gently steam distilled, beginning its transformation into essential oil.

It’s very much a case of field to bottle, without leaving the farm.

Lavender at the heart of Iris Debonair

In Iris Debonair, our English lavender takes its place as a heart note – the part of a fragrance that emerges after the initial top notes and forms much of its character.

Creed describes the English lavender at the heart of Iris Debonair as having a crisp clarity and cool aromatic quality, highlighting the influence of its cultivation in the chalky soils of Kent.

It sits alongside French iris pallida, creating a distinctly Franco-British story within the fragrance: lavender from the Kent countryside meeting iris from the landscapes of Les Landes in France.

For us, it is a lovely reminder that something which begins as an agricultural crop can travel much further than you might imagine.

From our fields to Paris

Standing in Paris this week and talking about Castle Farm, our lavender and the way we grow and distil it was a moment we felt particularly proud of.

There is, of course, a very glamorous world surrounding a fragrance launch. But behind the finished bottle is something much more familiar to us: a field, a variety of lavender, Kent chalk, a summer harvest and a team working hard to get the crop into the distillery at exactly the right time.

That is the part of the story we love most.

Because while Iris Debonair may now be travelling around the world, its lavender story begins here – in the Darenth Valley, in the fields we have cultivated for decades, and with the soil, plants and seasons that make Kent such a special place to grow lavender.

We’re incredibly proud to see Castle Farm lavender as part of Iris Debonair, and even prouder that the journey from our fields to the world of Creed begins right here at home.