William Morris once said that, after a beautiful house, the thing most to be longed for is a beautiful book. As I read a great deal of serious books and papers, I always like to have a stack of colorful “picture books” available to rest my eyes and brain, as well as to inspire me to “make and do.”
The Fragrant Garden: Growing and Using Scented Plants Julia Lawless and photographer Clay Perry have created a book which is at once informative, inspiring, and beautiful. Basic information is given about a wide variety of plants whose flowers, leaves, or resins have long been prized for their fragrance. Lawless also includes historical information on scented gardens of the past as well as suggestions for your own aromatherapy garden. One chapter contains several culinary recipes as well as instructions for making your own perfumes, wash-balls, and potpourris with material from your own garden.
Scented Treasures: Aormatic Gifts from Kitchen and Garden, Stephanie Donaldson. This beautiful book is chock-full of seasonal recipes easily within the reach of most households. Learn to create citrus pomanders, potpourris, posies, scented waters, special foods, traditional herb blends, and even beeswax furniture polish.
Wild Color: A Complete Guide to Making and Using Natural Dyes If you are interested in harvesting and using your own botanical dyes then you may wish to search for this out-of-print manual. Authoritative text and beautiful photography combine to make this what many home-dyers consider one of the best books for beginners. Learn about materials and processes in a non-intimidating fashion.
If you can’t find
Wild Color look for Jackie Crook’s
Natural Dyeing. This book is less comprehensive but still explores the basic processes of dyeing as well as many of the common dye materials. Both books make for an interesting browse even if you are only casually interested in home dyeing.
Natural Beauty Recipe Book:How to Make Your Own Organic Cosmetics and Beauty Products, Gill Farrer-Halls. Here is another book for those in the health community interested in “making their own.” The recipes range from after-shave to perfume, deodorants to mouthwashes, facial masks to hair shampoos. Fruits, oils, and a wide variety of flower waters and essential oils are used to make these fragrant and restorative products. Includes a chapter on packaging your finished products.
Pure Skin: Organic Beauty Basics, Barbara Close. If you are troubled by skin blemishes and irritations, you will enjoy this book. It describes four basic types of skin and provides detailed charts explaining how foods and drinks affect each of them. It also includes recipes for natural and organic products created to refresh and cleanse the skin.
Lavender’s Blue:Book of Nursery Rhymes If you are looking for a collection of old-fashioned nursery rhymes, you need look no further. Here Kathleen Lines has compiled the very best of these and has even included vintage children’s finger-games. Harold Jones’s sweet and colorful illustrations make this a delightful browse for your little one (and yourself!)
The Worlds of Ernest Thompson Seton Here are compiled some of the best and most engaging excerpts from the copious writings of one of America’s favorite naturalists—also one of the founders of the Boy Scouts movement. Beautiful passages describing wolves, bison, birds and more are accompanied by equally stunning paintings and sketches which reveal Seton’s close familiarity with animal anatomy. The book is a beautiful testament to Seton’s love and intimacy with nature. (Note: Rare statements indicate Seton’s feminist and evolutionary ideology.)
Title Photograph: (from top to bottom) The Fragrant Garden, Julia Lawless; The Worlds of Ernest Thompson Seton; The Natural Paint Book, Julia Lawless.
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