SEQUIM — How do you make a successful festival even bigger and better?
That was the topic of discussion Thursday night as more than 50 merchants, lavender growers and restaurateurs gathered to brainstorm and trade ideas on hosting the eighth annual Celebrate Lavender Festival.
The July festival is already touted as the North Olympic Peninsula’s most profitable event.
Planning for this year’s shindig, set for July 16-18, was handed to Port Angeles events specialist Scott Nagel after the festival’s director for the past six years, Pat McCauley, was replaced by the lavender association.
“Sequim is now the lavender capital of North America,” Nagel said, adding that at last count there were about 110,000 lavender plants being cultivated in the area.
Nagel, along with Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce representatives Bertha Cooper and Marny Hannan, led an animated, two-hour forum in the Olympic Theater Arts center on North Sequim Avenue.
The goal, they said, was to bring merchants from downtown together with the lavender growers whose farms around Sequim produce the festival’s iconic showcase.