Aromatherapy Blogs and Garden Blogs

Aromatherapy is the therapeutic practice and use of essential oils.  As essential oils are naturally extracted from a variety of scented plants, aromatherapists should have a good knowledge of botany and the chemistry of essential oils, to understand how essential oils work and in order to be able to identify a pure essential oil from a synthetically substituted essential oil.

Where possible, I try to establish links with other quality aromatherapy blogs and websites on the web.  But, as aromatherapy is so closely linked to botany, and therefore to the garden world, it would also be beneficial to establish links with garden blogs and garden websites - predominately those with a scented theme!

If you are a gardener, who has an interest in scented plants, and have a relevant garden blog or website, please contact me to discuss exchanging links!  I really think it would be beneficial to the both of us!

Aromatherapy in the Garden

For my first blog post of the New Year, I got to thinking about aromatherapy in the garden.  Spring is not far away, although depending on where you live it may seem like winter will never end! This year I really want to try and add some fragrant and aromatic plants and flowers to my porch/yard/garden.

A book which I have found extremely useful in this area is one which is on my favorite books list, on the left hand side of the blog - that is An Aromatherapy Garden by Julia Lawless.  Although it is written from an English perspective, I think it contains many interesting and useful facts and information no matter where you live in the world.  To give you an idea of what the book contains, here's a list of the contents page:

• history of the scented garden
• aromatic herbs for health and cooking
• a perfumery and aromatherapy border
• fragrant exotica and container plants
• secrets from the still room
• planning an aromatherapy garden
• aromatherapy plant potraits.

Of course, it depends on where you live as to what is possible to grow, but if you have an interest in both aromatherapy and plants, I would highly recommend this book, to give you some ideas.  It also contains many beautiful photos of flowers and plants which will inspire you if nothing else!  You can purchase the book by clicking on the link on the left hand side of the page, which also directs you to a review of the book.

I also have a couple of articles in the Sedona Aromatherapie library about aromatherapy garden, including an article I wrote on return from a trip to Pompeii in Italy, a couple of years ago.  I'll write more about that next time but in the meantime, here's the link for the two articles:

• Gardens of Pompeii
• An Aromatherapy Garden

People often associate aromatherapy with the bottles of essential oils - and often forget where those essential oils originally came from, so I think that creating your very own aromatherapy garden is both a reminder of that and a tranquil and calming place to study more about aromatherapy!  At least, that is my intention for the following year!

If you have any thoughts on aromatherapy and gardens please post me a comment below!

An essential oil garden....

Did you know that you could have a myriad of essential oil potentials in your very own garden or yard? Many essential oils come from common plants and flowers in our own gardens, depending on which part of the world we live in.


Some examples of plants and flowers which you could grow in your back garden and distil in a home made still (something I have yet to try!) include:

• lavender (lavandula angustifolia)
• rose (rosa damascena)
• rosemary (rosmarinus officinalis)
• peppermint (mentha piperita)
• thyme (thymus vulgaris)
• chamomile (chamaemelum nobile)

If you live in a warm climate, it may be possible to grow some of the citrus fruit trees, such as mandarin and lemon, although essential oils extracted from citrus fruit trees are cold expressed and not usually steam distilled.

Aside from the possibility of essential oils, the natural fragrance alone of these many plants and flowers, can be uplifting on a summer's day; as the season changes to fall, it is something to think about for next year...

To read the full article I wrote on essential oils in the garden, read An aromatherapy garden , originally published at Sedona Aromatherapie...

If you are a gardener, you may also be interested in How to use essential oils in the garden, the natural partner for the garden.

If you have any comments on essential oils and gardens let me know by posting a comment below!