Last night’s weather forecaster referred to it not just being ‘meterological summer’ in the sense of where we are in the calendar but weather-wise summer: this year we’re actually feeling the summer weather with sunny days, and the potential for some build up of thundery showers.
Here then, are a few lovelies to get out and find while the sun is shining. The plants you harvest now at the height of summer can be dried so they can bring the reminder of warmth and sunshine as you use them through the year.
ELDERFLOWER
Sambucus nigra
The absolute star of the June hedgerows is elderflower. The big white panicles of flowers are easier to spot, and even easier to identify by their slightly ‘catty’ smell. Don’t let this put you off, elderflower has long been considered a dressing table staple. Elderflower water is known as Aqua Sambuci. It is used for refining the skin, reducing freckles and keeping skin blemish free.
The flowers are around for just a few weeks. Traditionally the time for gathering is in the 3 weeks that straddle midsummer, but I find the best blooms are available from early June. They are becoming very popular now to gather for cordial and wine making. In comparison, for skincare you need to gather just a few.
Take a look at our elderflower gathering video here
Once gathered, use your elderflowers to make an infusion by pouring over boiling water and leaving to cool before straining. This can be used right away added to the bath, as a hair rinse, cleanser or incorporated into lotion or cream blends.
To make an elderflower water that will be stronger and last longer use the two-part infusion method. Take 100g of elderflowers and cover with 500ml water in a pan, heat to boiling and then turn off the heat, cover and leave to infuse. Once cool (or having left it overnight), strain off the flower and return the infused water to the pan with a further 100g fresh elderflowers. Repeat the heating and cooling process before straining and bottling.
Here’s lots of inspiration and recipes for using elderflower in your skincare.
STRAWBERRY
Fragaria vesca
Juicy red strawberries are iconic of summer picnic and a permanent fixture for Wimbledon, along with sugar and cream. These cultivated fruits can provide a great source of alpha hydroxy acids (AHAs) to help with chemical exfoliation. Use them crushed in a face mask. This is soothing for sensitive or acne-prone skin. Salicylic acid will slough away dead skin and clear pores helping eliminate excess oil and other impurities.
Strawberries have a reputation for helping brighten skin, even tone and create a healthy glow. Strawberry juice was a traditional treatment for whitening teeth. It’s also possible that strawberries can help provide some UV protection, nature often provides what we need at the time we need it.
Also look out for the much more diminutive wild strawberry. They are creeping ground-huggers that will spread, even in shady areas. The tiny fruits have the classic red outer, but often a white inner. While mini in size, they can be massive in flavour, if you get the right ones. You’ll probably also notice the pippiness of their skin, lots of tiny grey seeds pepper their outer covering. A little bit irritating on the teeth, perhaps but great as physical exfoliation. Use them either in a cleansing cream or include them in a soap.
ROSE
Rosa gallica
Rose is the classic June flower in many gardens and in its wild form through the hedgerows. It’s one of the most fundamental skincare ingredients, the basis of cold creams and included in nearly all women’s fragrances and about half of male fragrances too.
Rose petals can be put to immediate use in infusions or thrown into the bath. However, to ensure you can benefit from roses year round, it’s worth taking time to create your own rosewater through condensing or making a double infusion. Here’s how. This can be used on its own as a toner (beautifully refreshing after oil cleansing); added to a bath; or incorporated in products from spritzers to lotions and creams. You can also dry rose petals for future use.
As well as their astringent and anti-bacterial properties, roses are well-loved for their ability to lift spirits, calm tensions and refresh.
Here you’ll find lots of rosey inspiration for blend it yourself skincare.
CORNFLOWER
Centaurea cyanus / Cyanus segetum
With its pop of bright blue, cornflowers always stand out in a meadow, catching your eye. Flowers each have their own means to attract the pollinators they need to help them reproduce, evolving their form to suit the pollinators they pair with, a mini miracle. In doing so, they will aim to make efficient use of their energy and resources, so usually make a selection between scent of colour. Have you noticed how some of the brightest flowers may be immediately most appealing, but have little scent. Bright red poppies are another meadow example of the flower that attracts with colour, not scent.
One of the most popular former uses of cornflower is to help the eyes. Eau de Casselunettes was made by distilling the flowers and used as an eyewash for eyelid irritation or conjunctivitis (casse-lunettes being French for ‘eye breakers’). As a gentle herb it is good for use in eye make up remover. It’s also makes a kind daily facial lotion, and its blue colour (which can be used as a dye or an ink) provides a hair dye to help lessen yellow-ing streaks in grey or white hair.
If you’d like to try making skincare using cornflowers, buy some seeds and sow them in your garden. Though once common, cornflower is now considered endangered and so is protected by law and should not be gathered in the wild.
LADY’S BEDSTRAW
Galium verum
If you’re lucky enough to stumble across a field strewn with Lady’s bestraw, you’ll know it by the frothy, foaming sea of tiny yellow flowers, clustered into panicles and held up on wiry stems a foot or two tall, that also have thread-like leaves arranged in whorls. The plant has a hidden reputation as an aphrodisiac, I suspect this is connected to the warm, carefree summer vibe it provides, and the temptation to frolic in its honey-scented softness.
Traditionally celebrated on 24th June (the lady’s bedstaw fairy having been born on 9th March and reached maturity by late June), dances and ceremonies are held to acknowledge her gifts of fragrance, healing and abundance. Wreaths of bedstraw and wheat would be hung on doors and fences as a means to ward off evil.
These customs suggest long held belief in the power of lady’s bedstraw. While recognition and use has fallen away in the domestic sphere, it is an important plant in the scientific world, with properties that have contributed to cancer treatments, including doxorubicin, used in chemotheraphy.
As a member of the Galium genus, it is a sister plant to our familar cleavers (Galium aparine) and woodruff (Galium odoratum). Just like woodruff, the scent of lady’s bedstraw becomes stronger and sweeter with drying. Just like cleavers, the plant is great support for our lymph and blood, cleansing and detoxifying, and thereby creating the right conditions for radiant skin.
LIKE THE IDEA OF GATHERING YOUR OWN SKINCARE INGREDIENTS? …
… you might like to read some more.
For everything you need to know to get started with Blend-it-Yourself skincare using the plants that grow around you, see Vital Skincare by Laura Pardoe. This book takes you through the techniques and ingredients you’ll need to know to make your own natural skincare.
