Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

Good morning, dear friends!  I started drinking high-octane coffee again this week, and I'm wired and have already been very productive this not-very-hot-or-humid morning in Miami.  My front garden is a floral wonderland today, and I'm sharing my photos with you.  I hope they inspire you to grow your own fragrant botanicals, whether you harvest them to scent extraction or not.   I'll be here today, working on my hush-hush new fragrant product, so I'll be answering your natural perfumery questions. Gold Champaca Greeting me at my front door - a vigorous Jasmine grandiflorum plant Not scented in the morning - night-blooming jasmine A closeup of the pretty little nightblooming jasmine flowers Tahitian gardenia - yes, the one Monoi is made from My ylang ylang tree is loaded with blooms A harvest basket before 9 a.m. Wonderful work if you can get it!

Click to enlarge and see the beauty of this morning's harvest from the front of the house at Casa Jasmin, where Anya's Garden Perfumes blooms under the tropical sun. I got this quick harvest this morning before the "big" storm hit, and I just beat it by minutes. The big mixing bowl holds about a gallon of liquid, but in other terms, there are 30 vietnamese gardenias in there (about 3" across for reference), several golden champaca flowers, and the tiny yellow darlings are Aglaia odorata flowers. Into the alcohol tincture for the champacas and aglaias, into the enfleurage tray for the gardenias. I'm so lucky! Oh, the bamboo skewer you see on the right was used to "pollinate" my vanilla orchid flower. Let's see if I get a bean. ;-) The vanilla orchid just started blooming, and I have to go out every day for the one flower a day on the vine to try to get a harvest by hand-pollination. It's fun!

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...

Aztec Gold Plumeria aka Fragipani Natural perfumers have an innate love of nature, flowers and the beauty of this planet. I say that after years of observing the posts by them on a Yahoo group devoted to natural perfumery . Most like to get their hands "in the soil" and grow herbs and flowers so that they can enjoy the harvest as tasty food or as an ingredient in a perfume they create. I'm one of them. I've been a gardener for many, many years. I wrote a paper on organic gardening for a class back in 1972, and later wrote for Organic Gardening magazine. Passionate about herbs, fragrant plants, veggies and tree crops, I've grown plants in Pennsylvania, California, Oregon, New York, New Jersey and Florida - talk about spanning growing zones! The photo of the white and gold plumeria above, the variety known as "Aztec Gold" was taken in 2003 in my garden. I've been tincturing the flowers for years, obtaining a beautifully golden fragrant extract th...