Herb of the Week for 27th March
Evening Primrose by Lynn Kirkland
What a fantastic week we have had following our appearance on national
TV last week on the Campbell Live programme.
We were asked to be part of a feature about a book that has been written
called Toxic Beauty which outlines the chemicals that are included in many
personal care products.
These can affect your health and are not needed in products that are going
to be applied to the skin
.
The herb farm was chosen as a company that only uses botanical sourced ingredients
and that these are 100% natural.
We believe in educating people so they can make an informed choice.
We do make extracts and some oils ourselves from the herbs growing in the tranquil gardens of the herb farm.
There are some ingredients that we buy in after checking that the company
meets our strict criteria, and we like to show the source of these in the
gardens.
An example of this is evening primrose oil.
We use this precious oil in some of our moisturisers as it is rich in fatty acids and has a softening effect on the skin.
The oil is pressed from the tiny seeds that appear in seed capsules following the flowers.
They look very much like poppy seeds and if you have an abundance of evening primrose plants that have set seed then you can shake out the seed and use it as a substitute for poppy seed.
Evening primrose oil is an oil that can be taken internally to help with mood fluctuations associated with menstruation.
The herb plant to produce this delightful flowers and then useful seed
is a biennial herb.
If you let the seed drop you will have a multitude of baby plants to plant
elsewhere if you wish.
The plant grows as a rosette of leaves the first year and then sends up
the flower spire at the end of summer which then sets seed.
From the name one may imagine that the plant only flowers at night however this is not the case and you can enjoy these blooms with a lovely simplistic purity to them all day long.