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!