Long before there were rows of lavender on a terraced hillside outside Zion National Park, there was a curiosity for how living things grow. That thread, more than any single decision, is what led founder Alex Stojanoff from a research career in reproductive science to a small lavender operation in the red rock canyons of Southern Utah.
This is the story of how Zion Lavender Company began, and where it's headed next.
A scientist with dirt under his fingernails
Alex grew up in Melbourne, Australia, studying biology at Monash and the University of Melbourne. He would later become the first person to earn a PhD from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne, with a focus on human and animal in vitro fertilization. His career spanned andrology, embryology, biochemistry, immunology, infectious diseases, and genetics.
But the through-line in his life was never just the lab. As a child, he spent long weekends at his family's countryside holiday house, riding horses, planting trees, and classifying eucalyptus by hand. Lavender wasn't a fixture of the Australian bush, but a few bushes always found their way onto the property.
"My passion has always been growth, whether that's plants or embryos," he explains. "It's the same instinct, just pointed in different directions."
The trip that changed everything
In 2022, Alex traveled to France and made his way south to Provence. What he found there reshaped what he thought a lavender field could be.
"The French have mastered both the artistry and the science of lavender cultivation," he says. "Watching the growing, the cultivation, and the distillation up close was truly remarkable."
A later visit to his brother in Tasmania brought him to Bridestowe Lavender Estate, the oldest and largest lavender farm in Australia, founded in 1922 by C.K. Denny. Bridestowe proved something important: lavender doesn't only thrive in Provence. With the right conditions and a willingness to learn through trial and error (the same trial and error Mr. Denny worked through a century earlier), it can take hold somewhere new.
By the time he returned home, he was already thinking about starting his own venture.
Why Springdale, Utah
After leaving Australia in the late 1980s for postdoctoral training in London and Brussels, Alex moved to San Diego to set up a hospital clinic, and later joined the UNR School of Medicine in Las Vegas as an Assistant Professor. The Southwest had been home for decades when he purchased a house in Springdale, just outside the gates of Zion National Park.
The land behind the house wasn't easy. It was sloped, the soil was heavy clay, and Springdale's microclimate didn't match the textbook conditions lavender prefers: hot, dry, full sun, and fast-draining alkaline soil low in nutrients.
So he adapted. Flat terraces were built into the hillside to make planting possible. A drip irrigation system was installed so each plant could be watered efficiently in the dry desert air. From start to finish, the setup took roughly two months.
Today, the property holds around 500 lavender plants spread across a quarter to half acre, and Alex is still searching for new ground to expand onto.
Choosing the right lavender for the desert
Not every lavender will tolerate Utah. Three primary species exist in cultivation (English, French, and Spanish), and Alex avoids Spanish lavender entirely because of its high camphor oil content.
The backbone of the farm is English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia), prized for its superior cold hardiness and moisture tolerance. Varieties like Munstead and Hidcote produce beautiful violet-blue blooms and handle higher elevations well, both important in this corner of Utah.
He also grows varieties of French lavender (Lavandula intermedia), including Grosso for its abundant oil and deep purple blooms, Phenomenal for its tolerance of both cold and humidity, and Sensational, a descendant of Phenomenal with especially large flower spikes.
Plants have come from a handful of trusted sources, including Sunshine Nurseries in Seattle and American Meadows in Vermont, chosen for their variety and reliability.
Harvest, distillation, and a useful byproduct
Harvest comes in late July or early August, and it is, in Alex's words, all hands on deck. It usually takes three people roughly two to three hours to cut the lavender and prepare it for distillation.
Distillation itself is a full day's work. A specialist near Port Angeles, Washington helped him identify the right still; everything else, he taught himself. Ice blocks circulate in a cooling bath to keep the process running, and a good day yields a couple of hundred milliliters of pure lavender oil, the heart of every Zion Lavender product.
The byproduct, lavender floral water, has become a story of its own. It works beautifully as an air freshener, a gentle antiseptic household cleaner, and a refresher for laundry, and it's earned a quiet following among customers who've tried it.
Where you'll find Zion Lavender
The oils and sprays travel from the field in Springdale to a growing number of places: the Zion Lavender website, local farmers markets in St. George, Cedar City, and Washington County, and a handful of select shops and venues around Springdale itself. Guests staying in town may even spot a small bottle in their hotel room, available to take home after checkout.
What's next
The long view is straightforward. Should everything proceed as planned, Alex hopes to grow Zion Lavender from a single hillside operation into a network of lavender plantations across the southwest, places where visitors can walk among the rows in full bloom and see, with their own eyes, what a scientist's curiosity has been quietly building.
For now, the rows outside Zion keep growing. The harvest comes around once a year. The work continues by hand, in small batches, season by season.
That's the way Alex prefers it.
Want to bring a piece of Zion home? Explore the full collection of small-batch lavender oils, sprays, and roll-ons at zionlavender.com/collections/all.