Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

  Ylang Ylang Tincture is Gorgeous! by  Anya McCoy  |  Jun 16, 2014  |  Anya's Garden Perfumes ,  natural aromatics ,  Perfume From Your Garden book ,  raw materials of perfumery  |  0 comments I wish you could smell these ylang-ylangs!! They look limp, and that’s because I wilt them for an hour or so before putting into tincturing alcohol. The tincture I wrote about a few weeks ago is dark green, and saturated with so much scent, it could be ylang absolute. Incredibly sweet and heady. There are about two dozen in the basket. ( I wrote about this tincture a month ago  when I started it, and it is so saturated with aroma molecules now, the alcohol looks black) Ylang Ylang flowers ready for the alcohol tincture. I posted this on my Facebook page the other day and had a tremendous amount of interest. Most aromatherapists and natural perfumers know the ylang ylang essential oils and concrete that is available for blends. I’m fortunate in that I live in the subtropics so that I can grow

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