Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

It’s Hyacinth Tincture and Enfleurage Time by  Anya McCoy  |  Mar 12, 2014  |  Anya's Garden Perfumes ,  Perfume From Your Garden book  |  4 comments Three fragrant hyacinth flower stalks It’s a real hassle to try to grow hyacinths in Miami. Yes, I can get the bulbs from a northern supplier, put them in the refrigerator to force them, try to harden the bulbs after the blooms are spent, etc., but I really don’t have the time or space for that. I’m not going to buy hyacinths from Fresh Market or Whole Foods again. This year I discovered that the local Publix has many stronger-scented ones, and since one stem of the four flowering bulbs in a pot was drooping, I got two pots for the price of one. The flowers were fine, the stem just looked awful. Into the tincture and enfleurage, they go! These processes will be documented in my upcoming book Perfume From Your Garden (renamed Homemade Perfume, pub. 2018). If you like, you can follow the posts about the book content I write on Facebook

Ruffled, delicate Summerscent blooms Do you love the fragrance of blooming michelia or ylang ylang flowers?  Then you'll love this pretty flowering plant, sometimes called Summerscent or dwarf tree jasmie.  Radermachera kunming is a rare plant, not often found in garden centers.  It starts blooming when only 1 - 2' tall, and mine little plant in a pot is full of blooms and buds.  The sweet scent, and at least now, with it's first big summer flush of flowers, doesn't smell like jasmine.  It's much more like the piercing sweet floral fruity scent of michelia or ylang ylang flowers. It has large cluster of buds ready to open when the current flowers fade.  I'm going to start picking the flowers for enfleurage today. Summerscent is loaded with juicy buds ready to follow in a fragrant succession of blooms Seeing that it's native to Thailand, it is a tropical plant, and you either need to live in a tropical or subtropical area to grow it outside, or have

Trygve Harris of Enfleurage sent me a series of photographs of frankincense trees from different locales in Oman.  Very intriguing are the ones she calls "Old Lady" trees.  Below are some photos of them, and a photo of some recently-harvested resin from them. Here's what she wrote about these Old Lady trees:  These trees are over the hill from the first pictures I sent. It's still humid--still gets the mist in the summer, but less so. It's protected. These are the Old Lady trees. These ones are strong and fierce   From her first frankincense newsletter, sent on Feb. 22, 2012:  Fresh and oozy Mughsayl (Black) frankincense from the coastal mountains west of Salalah. This is my personal favorite. If you are distilling your own, this is probably your best choice.   It's got a rich snappy sparkle, and glittering pinenes with just a dash of orange.   It's the one I'm talking about when i talk about the Old Lady Trees. This

This holiday my home is scented with the heady, floral, spicy beauty of white tuberoses. I just got a shipment in of several hundred flowers, and I now have trays filled with the vegetable shortening and scented beauties. I made several pomades "recharges" with this shortening last spring and summer, but I just wanted a bit more scent in the fat so this latest refreshing with flowers. I also had a tray worth left over for a student who stopped by, so she's going to get some more pomade going herself. Ah, the fragrance. It's giving me two beautiful experiences: once when I'm putting the flowers in the tray, and later on when I wash the fat with alcohol and create a usable product for my perfumery.

All gardenias are not the same. Modern natural perfumery has a growing selection of raw materials from different species and varieties of gardenia to choose from, and we're all the better because of it. This image typifies the gardenia perfume fragrance we all want: lush, sensual, wanton, spicy, buttery, floral, intoxicating, over-the-top and proud of it. The creamy, green, almost-obnoxious scent of the full-blown gardenia that is common in gardens, the cultivated Gardenia jasminoides aka Gardenia augusta: Gardenia jasminoides aka Gardenia augusta In the early-to-mid part of the 20th century, there were a few who produced gardenia absolute form the G. jasminoides/augusta. Story has it that the advent of World War II and the discovery of synthetic aromachemicals that mimicked the scent of gardenia put an end to the natural gardenia absolute. In the early 21st century, with the rise of natural perfumery, the demand for a gardenia absolute arose again. I am enfleuraging gardenias, and

Gardenia flower When I was in school studying Economic Botany, (scroll down) I reveled in tales of the Plant Hunters. These were adventurous botanists who traveled to remote regions looking for plants that would be useful to us. Many focused on medicinal plants, but I was obsessed with fragrant plants - of course! I never did become a Plant Hunter, and was a bit disheartened to learn that for the past decade or so, the Plant Hunters tend to be governed by the headspace machine, which although it captures the scent of the flower, results ultimately in a recreation of the scent with synthetic chemicals. Headspace proponents argue that by doing so, they are ultimately protecting the plant because there is no need to harvest it. Well, I like my essences natural and I like them renewable, and I especially like the idea that there are still Plant Hunters like Trygve Harris of Enfleurage in New York and other entrepreneural souls who strive to establish new plantations and grassroots indust

Posted earlier today on various groups I host on Yahoo and one I don't, but my friend's group is dedicated to oils and herbs: No, it's not a man, and if he was, I guess he'd be like the killer in Perfume, the book/movie. The image is of a camel providing the power for an ancient oil press, probably like the same one used centuries ago for moringa/Ben/Behn oil. Oil of Ben or "Behn" is Moringa oleifera, loved for its many useful properties, not the least of which is its use as an extraction medium for flower scent in enfleurage. It has been used for this purpose, and as a perfume base, since the time of the Egyptians. The seed oil can also be used for cooking and lubrication and other purposes. It is believed to never go rancid, but I can't comment on that. So I was rereading a bit of Piesse the other day and he comments on the "inodorous" Behn oil from Jamaica and notes its use as an enfleurage medium. A few years ago I got some scentless Ben oil