Lavender is a plant that loves sunshine, warmth and rocky soil - exactly what Hvar has in abundance. The island gets around 2,700 hours of sunshine per year (for comparison, London gets about 1,500 hours). The lavender grows on dry terraced hillsides that would be too rocky and dry for most other crops.
Harvesting happens by hand in June and July, when the flowers are at their peak. Farmers cut the purple spikes with small sickles and bundle them into sheaves that are then distilled into essential oil. It takes a huge quantity of flowers to make just one small bottle of oil - about 150 kilograms of fresh lavender for one litre of oil.
The lavender has been grown on Hvar for hundreds of years. Before refrigerators existed, lavender oil was used to keep stored linen and wool smelling fresh and to keep moths away. Today it is used in perfumes, soaps, cosmetics and cooking - a little lavender honey or lavender cake is a Hvar speciality.
Walking through a lavender field on Hvar in June is a full sensory experience. The colour is extraordinary - thousands of purple spikes against the limestone-white soil and the blue of the Adriatic below. And the scent is so strong you can smell it from a distance, attracting a constant cloud of bees.