Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

  How to Make Perfume – Why I don’t enfleurage golden champaca by  Anya McCoy  |  Aug 28, 2015  |  Anya's Garden Perfumes ,  enfleurage ,  How to Make Perfume ,  natural aromatics ,  natural perfume ,  raw materials of perfumery  |  6 comments When you make perfume from flowers, there are several ways to extract the scent. I love to enfleurage rare flowers. Enfleurage is placing flowers on a bed of semi-hard fat, such as shortening, or rendered leaf lard and suet. The next step in the process is to “wash” the fat in alcohol. This post isn’t about enfleurage, except to point out why I don’t enfleurage a flower that seems ripe for the process. Some flowers, even though they emit a lovely fragrance, shouldn’t be enfleuraged. There are several reasons for this. Orange blossoms are fragile and would fall apart in the enfleurage tray, requiring laborious deleveraging process – picking the petals out, one by one, with tweezers. Tweezers are routinely used to remove flowers from enfleurage

  Best Lemongrass Oil for Making Perfume by  Anya McCoy  |  Mar 1, 2015  |  natural aromatics ,  raw materials of perfumery  |  2 comments I grow both of the most common types of lemongrass in my garden: the bulbous stalk type we’re most familiar with,  Cymbopogon citratus, known as West Indian lemongrass.  This is the one used in stirfrys, Asian marinade pastes, and many savory dishes. I also grow  Cymbopogon flexuosus, known as East Indian lemongrass , which grows much taller than the citratus, and has a skinny stalk, no swelling at the base. Earlier research showed me that the flexuosus is used in sweet recipes in the Far East, such as sodas, syrups, candies, and such. Cymbopogon flexuosus aka East Indian lemongrass. Notice the base of the stalks is not swollen, it’s a slender stem. Love this old photo, it’s from 2003 when I first got my C. flexuosus plant. Here’s a shot of the planted flexuosus in my garden today, it’s a bit beaten down by rain, but notice the tall, rangy growth ha

Perfume of Meyer Lemon and Labdanum Frolic Together by  Anya McCoy  |  Jan 21, 2015  |  Anya's Garden Perfumes ,  Perfume From Your Garden book ,  raw materials of perfumery  |  1 comment This is a closeup photo of one branch of my Meyer Lemon mini tree showing it touching branches with m labdanum bush. The two labdanums that I’m growing are experimental, to see if they will survive in hot, humid Florida. They’ve survived one summer so far, and are thriving. The Meyer Lemon does very well here, and the juxtaposition of the ethereal citrus top note fragrance from their flowers, blending with the sweet middle note of the labdanum leaves is lovely. Yes, middle note for labdanum leaves. The extract, whether essential oil or absolute or resin, is, of course, a base note. Although I have not extracted the scent from my plants yet, the endearing, sweet and slightly spicy scent seems to be a middle note. One branch of the Meyer Lemon is touching the base of the labdanum plant, which is abo

  Ylang Tincture is a Beautiful Perfume by  Anya McCoy  |  Nov 13, 2014  |  Anya's Garden Perfumes ,  natural aromatics ,  raw materials of perfumery  |  4 comments I’ve blogged about tincturing the ylang-ylang flowers in my Miami garden. They only smell highly fragrant after the sun goes down, and the next morning the scent retreats into the stems, where the tree protects it from the hot sun. The big, deep yellow ylang flower is the type I harvest for the tincture. The smaller, green flower with its petal curved around the ripe flower is immature and needs a day or two to reach the maturity of the prized ylang. This tincture captures the high, sweetest notes of what is called the “Chanel No. 5” tree. If you’ve ever read about the women of the Philippines wrapping the fresh flowers in their hair to scent it, this is that scent. No heat was used to extract the scent, so it is at its purest height of beauty. The scent is richest at midnight, and that’s when I pick the flowers. The wo

  Growing Ambrette Seeds for Making Perfume by  Anya McCoy  |  Oct 13, 2014  |  Anya's Garden Perfumes ,  natural aromatics ,  Perfume From Your Garden book ,  raw materials of perfumery  |  2 comments Just a quick post about the progress of my patch of ambrette seed plants. Known as Abelmoschas moschata or (Syn.  Hibiscus abelmoschus  L.), is prized for food, drink, industrial and medicinal uses, but I prize it for the musk-scented seeds, which are valuable in perfumery. The seeds have a floral, musky scent, and can substitute, in their own way, not identically, the scent of the musk deer grains. They’re a true cruelty-free way to add a musky scent to perfume. Imagine my surprise when I went out to re-shoot the blurry yellow ambrette flower, and found it had morphed to a lovely salmon color! There are dozens of flower buds on my 15 plants, but there was only one flower yesterday and today, the first of the patch. I didn’t notice the blurry nature of the first photo until I went in