How The Lavender Cottage 薰衣草森林 Left Me Feeling Purple-Blue

by JH - Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Introduction

The lavender cottage, as from what I heard from the guide, is a non-profit business set up by 2 girls purely for the love of lavenders and to create a breathing space for humans to reflect and relax away from the crowded cities. As my guide said, this piece of land belongs to one of the girl's grandfather and they had it turned into the attraction that it is today.
The drive up to their exquisite location in Xinshe 新社 can only be reached via small size vehicles as the road up was a narrow slope all the way in. Despite it's realative hard-to-reach location, the lavender cottage is a well known attraction for locals and visitors alike. I had not wanted to go there at first but was strongly recommended by the guide to have a look.

Non-profit indeed as the NT200 you spent on the admission tickets is fully redeemable for any expenses inside the premises. So I am wondering how do the staff get paid? That's besides the point. Anyway because there are many knick-knacks within the garden itself, such as a souvenir shop, little carts selling homemade soap, snacks shops etc. perhaps that's where the other revenues come from, There are also other branches of the Lavender cottage ( not the souvenir shops outlet) and really impressive how they managed to attract fo many visitors despite their locations, must be great publicity!

旅人的梦中森林

View special exhibits by curators such as the below by Cathie Chan. The smile of a girl carrying an umbrella, waiting for you to tell her your travel stories.

Shops selling handmade soaps and body products of all kind to tickle your sense of smell with the scent of flowers.

Inside the Lavender House where a mini painting exhibition by Marie Laurencin (1883- 1956) was put up.

Entrance of the house.

Love the sof strokes and pastel colors conveying feminise softness from Marie Laurencin,

The Blooms

Some of the interesting flowers spotted in the garden.

Not to be eaten, as was written.

紫藤花 Wisteria

They were the ones in bloom rather than Lavenders when I visited in mid-April.

The cottage premises is not huge and you can easily cover the whole "forest" in an hour or two.

Firefly Festival was about to start when I visited. Then again I don't think tourists from overseas are able to join in, unless you choose to stay at their accommodation for a night. Yes accommodation stay is exclusive to Xinshe brunch only. No driver would want to bring you up here at night as there are no road lights along the way and thus too dangerous.

Mail To Someone Special Or To Yourself

While climbing the slope up to the main Lavender field site, you will spot pretty mail boxes along the way. These belongs to the 幸福信箱's shop whereby you can choose to mail postcards to anywhere, anytime in the world.

This is the mailing house.

They are very creative as to what you can do with your postcards. You can choose which dates to specify for sending and it can be as late as 1 year later. When I was there, the dates were mainly for next year's postage by month i.e. Jan 2017, Jun 2017 etc., leaving only the nearest for this year to be on 20th May 2016. And they have little labels for the dates.

Send a card to yourself~~

Well some sweet thoughts for visitors.

Or you can choose to send to very random people... like ALIENS.... :)

You don't have to write any address to that. But of course, you will never receive the cards at your mailbox again.

Another sculpture by Cherng Postman. Created by the artist to emphasis on the importance and the more meaningful deed of sending a postcard rather than email, the artist invites travelers to connect with him.

Other meaningful messages popped up around the premises

许愿树

This huge Bodhi Wishing Tree is located right up at the top of the lavender field. Do not missed it.

Pen a wish and tie it to the tree as what many did.

Where Were The Lavenders?

Alright back to the lavender field... Here it is. But where have all the lavenders gone? It was very hot by the afternoon and this weather certainly did not favour lavenders' growth. In addition, the unpredictable rain too, could have contributed to an earlier end as I learnt from the staff later.
This was the reason with the expereince here left me feeling exactly purple-blue left and right.

The sparity was disappointing and almost deafening.

What was left were the bareness beauty of the Lavenders.

Here's me with the back view of the lavender field and trying to be upbeat about the lack of them. :)

Though the lavenders in the field were a disappointment, I cheered myself up with a Lavender Ice Cream. Which you can offset from the admission fees.

There are also little shops selling handmade fragrance soaps which smelt heavenly but also slightly expensive. Still, I bought 2 bars~

Overall

Though I would say it's a lovely place to visit with great facilities and ambience, greetings by friendly staff all around etc., the flower sightings were a disappointment. The 2016 Lavender Festival was to last till end april and I was there in mid april, but perhaps due to the recent rain, the lavenders were almost all gone, left mainly with the main stem and bud. Huge disappointment.

Come at the right period perhaps? Though it's always so hard to predict you know, with weather but I believe your enjoyment will double or triple if Lavenders were spotted.

薰衣草森林新社店

www.lavendercottage.com.tw

Address: 台中县新社乡中合村中兴街20号
Tel: 04-25931066 Fax: 04-25931566

Add-On: MUSHROOM GARDEN 百菇庄

It was a stopover to try some Mushroom Biscuits which is a local snacks for buying home but I merely walked around and didn't tried any of the food as I was still full from the previous Tang Shui. If you like however, every product mushroom-related is sold. Even Mushrooms Ice cream!

There are many tourists having their meal here and is often a stopover to have some bites of the toilet before heading to Lavender cottage or other parts of Xinshe.

The mushroom ice cream is only NT20! I wished I had stomach for that.