Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

  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 midnigh...

  Ylang Ylang Flower Tincture is Gorgeous Perfume! by  Anya McCoy  |  May 13, 2014  |  Anya's Garden Perfumes ,  natural aromatics ,  natural perfumery course ,  Natural Perfumery Institute ,  Perfume From Your Garden book ,  raw materials of perfumery  |  6 comments The first charge of flowers is in the jar. The slightly-wilted second recharge flowers are in the foreground. The liter jar holds about eight flowers, and they give color and scent immediately to the alcohol. If you have Ylang Ylang growing, you must tincture it, it’s so beautiful, so easy. My ylang-ylang is blooming here in Miami, and I gathered flowers in various stages of maturity, from green to the “ripest” with yellow petals and a red throat, and put them into 190 proof alcohol. Within a few minutes, they had surrendered their perfume to the alcohol. I let them sit for a day and then recharged the alcohol. The flowers are slightly wilted, as you see, and ...

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!

My first photo of my first ylang flower in the hot, bright Miami sun. Ylang ylang trees can quickly and easily grow to 40' in Miami.  That is the major reason I put off growing one for so many years.   Then I read that in Madagascar, where the trees are grown for their fragrant flowers, which are a major economic resource for the perfume industry, are kept pruned to six to 10 feet so the flowers are easy to harvest.  So, about a year and a half ago I planted a tiny four foot tree and have had to prune it so it's now about 7' tall. The young green blooms are cute!  However, their scent is very weak, so they can't be harvested yet. Ylang ylang trees bloom in the Autumn, I read, but friends who have visited Fairchild gardens report they can bloom year round.  Friends who have them growing in their neighborhoods, not their own lots (since they're so big and can overwhelm a city lot) couldn't recall what time of year they bloomed....

Lemongrass plantation - Malaysia I've always been a dreamer and an optimist. Time to move forward with the project I touched upon in my last blog. Backstory: I dropped the ball in September of 2008 when I was scheduling a lunch with someone from the biggest vetiver distillation company in Haiti. That week, and the week following, huge storms swept Haiti, causing horrific flooding and loss of life. I figured to just back off as she took care of business, and I just felt superfluous to the problems they/she were facing, and lost contact with her. As I wrote recently, I'm going to direct efforts into reforestation efforts in Haiti, as soon as I can connect with a local agency. They're impossible to contact this week, but I'll keep at it. I'm also going to recontact my distillation connection for several reasons. I feel terrible I just gave up when faced with the situation in 2008. I guess I suffer from PTSD from all the hurricanes we get here in Florida, and ...