This Lavender Farm Blooms With More Than 80,000 Plants Every Season — And It's Just 2 Hours From NYC

About a two-hour drive from the urban bustle of New York City is a soothing site centered around one plant. Lavender By the Bay on Long Island's North Fork in East Marion blooms with more than 80,000 lavender plants each season on its 17-acre property, creating a calming pastel paradise.

The farm grows more than 20 varieties of both French and English lavender, each with its own flowering schedule, so there are three peak periods in mid-June, early July, and late summer or early fall.

In anticipation of the blooms, the farm opens for the season this weekend, with Saturday and Sunday hours from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m throughout April, weather permitting. While the plants are still budding, the farm shop features seasonal gifts, like lavender honey made at the farm's apiary, sachets designed by Susan Rozenbaum, and an assortment of lavender plants.

As it gets closer to the bloom periods, the farm will open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from June through September, when visitors can "walk through magical fields of purple and experience lavender in its most natural form," as well as "take a lavender-scented break in our shaded pavilion," the site describes. Calling it a "relaxing break," Lavender By the Bay invites guests to "lose yourself in an ocean of purple, and allow the intoxicating fragrance of lavender to wash over you."

The English varieties, which can grow two feet tall, bloom first in June with hues ranging from white, blue, and pink to three shades of purple. As July comes around, the French lavenders show their colors, stretching even taller than the English ones, in what it calls a "classic intense purple," likening the fields in Provence, France. "This is the opportune time to visit," the farm says. "Our fields flower to become a magnificent sea of purple and make for the most gorgeous photos."

The family-run farm is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, having opened in 2002 by the Rozenbaums. They added another site in 2018 in Calverton, about 27 miles closer to New York City, which will also reopen in the spring.