Gaelic for Glen of the Oaks, Glendarragh was born in 2007, when our young family made the choice to balance academics, community, and athletics with hands-on agrarian stewardship. We took to heart Walt Whitman: “After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains.” 

For most in Maine at the time, lavender was a synthetic ingredient found boxed in household and personal care goods down every other aisle of chain stores – and sometimes mixed with synthetic vanilla!  This, we knew, was not as nature intended for humans - or pollinators - to experience lavender.

We chose to plant lavender and invite people to experience its clean, natural scent as found in nature and in our carefully crafted products. Lavender grows the world over but in 2007 was not a registered crop in Maine. It became the signature plant in our drive to reclaim gently rolling fields in the St. George River valley and continue a farming tradition on this land that predates Maine’s statehood in 1820.

The earliest settlers called our home McLains Mills and used the St. George to power shingle mills and to transport ice and milk to the coast. For almost two decades, our family has worked with the fields and moisture of the river to substantiate a simple truth of nature: The health of people, plants, pollinators and the planet are inextricably linked; the health of one helps the health of another. This reality is on full view through Glendarragh and its carefully created self-care and home good products and we delight in inviting others to learn through experience.