My attempts at making beauty products from the garden have never gone beyond the rose water from petals that most children try. Natural Homemade Beauty is tempting me to go a bit further.
As author herbalist Leoniek Bontje explains, the advantage of making your own creams, lotions and sprays is that you know exactly what’s in them rather than “ingredients with long, unpronounceable scientific names”.
“The main benefit of making your own beauty products is having full control over what you put in them,” she says.
(I was given a book in return for a fair review.)
Many of those ingredients are things that most of us have growing in our gardens, such as marigolds, lavender, and lemon balm.
The book explains how these everyday plants can be turned into treatments to help everything from minor cuts and bruises to cracked lips.
There are a few surprises: I knew dock leaves are good for nettle stings but not that the white deadnettle (Lamium album) can be used in the same way. Even more interesting was a use for horsetail (Equisetum arvens) – something I’ve long needed as it’s rampant in my garden. Evidently, it can be used to make a hand soak that strengthens nails.
The ‘recipes’ range from the simple – using herbs in a steam bath or infusing chamomile in water to make an eyewash – to the more complicated process of making a solid shampoo or soap. There are also ideas for using plants in the home, including herbs that can protect, from things such as clothes moths, and a way of making natural fragrance sticks or room sprays.
Instructions are clear and there’s an explanation of basic ingredients and equipment that will be needed. Plenty of illustrative photographs make it a colourful read and help to break up the text.
Woven through is advice from other experts in the field who share their methods and recipes, including Marlies van Heusden’s marigold soap and a hand balm from Liza Witte.
Naturally, there is a warning to use plants with respect as not all are harmless and people react differently to them. More amusing is the advice to mix tumeric well with several other ingredients before using or risk ending up with yellow skin.
And as Leoniek says, most of the recipes are starting points: “Play around with ingredients and create your own personal products.”
Natural Homemade Beauty by Leoniek Bontje is published by Batsford Books with an RRP of £14.99. You can buy it here for £13.79. (If you buy via this link, I receive a small commission. The price you pay is not affected.) Alternatively, you may wish to buy from an independent bookseller here. All prices correct at time of publication of this post.
You can read more of my gardening and garden-related book reviews here.
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