Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

  Distilling Cornutia grandifolia for perfume and health by  Anya McCoy  |  Oct 29, 2015  |  Anya McCoy ,  Anya's Garden Perfumes ,  Healthy perfume ,  Herbalism ,  Hydrosols ,  natural aromatics ,  raw materials of perfumery  |  2 comments I’ve long been obsessed with a tropical member of the Mint family Labiatae and focused on obtaining some plants of it to grow in my fragrant garden. They were harder to find than I imagined, but I got two in small pots about a year and a half ago. You can read more about them  here. These plants are as aggressive in their growth habit as mints; instead of growing horizontally via runners, they grow vertically, leaping skyward at an astonishing rate. I don’t fertilize them, and they don’t have any pests or diseases. On a sunny Sunday in Miami, Angie and Julia showed up to harvest them and we worked together on the distillation of the big, soft, velvety, fragrant leaves. The leaves smell like a combination of balsam, tobacco, mint, and sweetness.

  Ask the Perfumer forum and Tropical Lilac! 12/8/2013 by  Anya McCoy  |  Dec 8, 2013  |  Anya's Garden Perfumes  |  6 comments I’ll be here until 10 tonight to answer your perfumery questions and take time out to play with the velvety, highly-scented *leaves* of the tropical lilac plant I found yesterday. I’ve been searching online for a long time for it and accidentally stumbled across it when I went to buy an elderberry plant Friday. Cornutia grandifolia trained as a tree. Source trees454blog I was looking at the Everglades cherry tomato plants (another one I’ve lusted after for some time!) and saw these pots with huge, velvety leaves. The nursery didn’t mention the plant as available on their website. Their garden helper didn’t know the plant's name, esp. the botanical name I used. Finally, after I had him load it into my cart, and I was paying, I remembered tropical lilac or Jamaican lilac, and he said “yes, yes,” which confirmed what I already knew. See how pretty those f