The country air around Sussex’s only lavender farm is permeated with the perfume of the purple shrub. On a downward sloping five-acre field at Lordington Lavender Farm, near Chichester, there are 26,500 lavender plants in 63 rows, each row forming a gently rounded roll that bursts into flower in the summer months.

It’s a spectacular sight, the lines of purple haze enhanced by the delicate reds, whites and yellows of wild flower banks that flank its edges, where herds of deer graze in neighbouring fields, barn owls rear their young in a distant tree and float around every night, red kites and buzzards hover overhead and swifts dart about.

A natural haven for wildlife, the lavender blooms attract swarms of endangered bumble bees and dozens of species of butterfly, the dense woody stems perfect for the nests of field mice and field voles, and for hiding hares and their leverets.

“I love its biodiversity,” says Andrew Elms, who owns the 750-acre arable farm with his wife Rosie and son Alexander. “The lavender field is beautiful to look at and the scent is lovely but because it is completely natural – no fertilisers or sprays – the sheer amount of wildlife it attracts is astonishing. The hedges are corridors for wildlife and when you have a mix of crops in the fields, you create a different habitat at all times of the year. ”

Biodiversity is a philosophy very close to Andrew’s heart. A former lecturer in agriculture at Plumpton College, near Lewes, and the owner of a small farm in East Sussex, he and his family bought Lordington Farm in 1985 and he was finally able to put what he preached into practice.

His original herd of 180 dairy cows has gone now, although he keeps a small herd of 40 pedigree Sussex cows for beef, and there are stables too. But the main farming business is arable, fields of rape and spring barley, and conservation-grade oats and wheat sold to companies such as Jordan’s and Kingsmill.

Farming with nature

Lordington Farm is a member of the Guild of Conservation Grade Producers, which promotes the production of food using environmentally appropriate farming practices, and Andrew is anxious to dispel the myth that farming practices discourage wildlife. “Farmers get a bad press,” he says. “People say that there is no bird life and no wildlife, and maybe it was true in the 1970s and 80s. But since then I don’t know of one farmer who has not put in more hedges and worked hard to improve nature.”

The Lordington lavender field was planted 10 years ago, an experiment in diversification. “I was out here in this field one day in May and it was all grain,” recalls Andrew. “But I was thinking about colour, and lavender came into my mind. So I thought I’d give it a go.” Hand-planted by a team of six over five or six days, the thousands of plants of Mailette, a French variety of English lavender, produced 19 litres of lavender oil by the second year.

“Our oil has a unique fragrance because the only ingredient we use during the extraction process is water,” says Andrew. “Lots of lavender oils are extracted by the use of solvents, which gives it a bitter smell, but the scent of Lordington oil is purely floral.”

The blooms are harvested by machine in July – drier weather leading up to harvest produces more oil – and forked into an airtight trailer. For six hours, steam is pumped in through the bottom of the trailer and exits through a chimney into a condenser, where the steam evaporates, leaving the oil behind.

The oil, used as a soothing tonic since ancient times, is used to make Lordington’s own products, from culinary essence, soaps, creams, pillow sprays and bath oil to relaxing shampoos for dogs and horses. “Surprisingly, the biggest markets are America and Scandinavia,” says Andrew.

But the lavender experiment has not always run like a smoothly oiled machine. When the field was planted in 2002, a litre of lavender oil was worth £78. Three years later, prices collapsed thanks to competition from China, dropping to £35 a litre, and a year later was a catastrophic £15-16.

“I know a farmer in Kent with lavender fields who ploughed them all up at that point,” says Andrew.

“But I had invested so much into mine. I wasn’t about to give up.” By 2007, the lavender oil market was growing and he was experienced year-on-year increase in sales, a saving grace that year, when rains flattened his other crops but left his lavender field virtually unscathed as its slope helped the water to drain away.

The lavender field is Andrew’s special project. He is gradually stepping down from running the farm and his 27-year-old son Alexander is taking over but, Andrew says with a smile, Alexander doesn’t feel as passionately about lavender. Andrew will continue to tend his purple field, while also spending more time in Transylvania, where he is part of a consortium that keeps a herd of water buffalo, from which mozzarella cheese is produced.

This year, Andrew is enthralled with the arable field adjoining his lavender field, last year a wheat crop left to go fallow over winter and this summer a self-seeded meadow of poppies, clover, knapweed, buttercups, yellow rattle, oxeye daisies, chicory, mallow, trefoil and field scabious.

“Meadows are places of beauty,” says Andrew. “We sowed a meadow six or seven years ago and in August six or seven thousand goldfinches poured in. Wonderful.”