When I first started making my all natural soap and skincare products there were a few things that were really important to me. I wanted to make products that were as absolutely natural as possible - no chemicals, no artificial colours and fragrances, no hardeners or emulsifiers - just natural products. I just wanted to make products using beautiful natural butters and oils and the finest essential oils. I also wanted to use the flowers and herbs growing in my own garden at my house, The Wrens Nest.

The season starts for me usually around the end of March when I start to think about what new seeds I will plant that year. A lot of my flowers and herbs are in the garden year round but every year I will plant extra calendula and chamomile, as these plants don't always survive the winter. There are so many great places now to source seeds. I got my organic seeds this year from FruitHill Farm, an online shop but your local garden centre will have a good choice too.

I love this time of the year, the planning, the getting my hands mucky. Its the anticipation of what's to come that excites me and its usually while Im doing all this preparation in the garden that I think up my new soaps and products to try to extend my range of natural skincare. The list is long with plans for the future.

Once the flowers are in full bloom in the Summer things really get busy for me in the garden. There are flowers to be picked every day - the more you pick, the more they grow - and then they need to be dried. My hotpress is usually stacked high with trays of drying flowers!

Once the flowers are dried I use them to make infused oils. Calendula infused oil is the oil I use most often. I use it as the base for my body oil, it goes in my soaps and I also use it in a lot of my creams. Calendula is such an incredible healing flower.  Its benefits include being soothing for allergic reactions, healing, a natural anti inflammatory, antiseptic, anti microbial. A lot of skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis and dermatitis can be eased using calendula oil. It's one of natures true healing plants. If you'd like to learn a little more about the wonders of calendula, check out this article from organicfacts.

Lavender is another plant that provides me with lots of healing flowers which I use in infused oils and as dried flowers to add to my soaps. Some of the benefits of lavender include being used to treat various skin disorders such as acne, wrinkles, psoriasis, and other inflammatory conditions. It is often used to speed up the healing process of wounds, cuts, burns, and sunburn because it improves the formation of scar tissues. It aids restful sleep, can treat anxiety and provide pain relief - truly a healing plant.

I use a lot of my dried flowers in my soaps too. The very first soap I made was my Signature Soap, which uses dried lavender and calendula flowers from my garden. All my soaps are made the old fashioned, cold process way using olive, coconut & calendula oils and shea butter to ensure a long lasting, creamy, moisturising bar of soap packed with glycerine.

My ideas for new products is a long list and my mind is always buzzing with different things to try and different ways to incorporate the flowers from my garden into my work but the one thing that is always constant is the garden and the flowers that grow there. It may look different every year, that is the nature of growing for you. We often don’t have control over what happens in a season. However, every year I will plant my seeds and every year they will grow and every year the flowers that are produced will find their way into my gorgeous products and into the hands of my customers.

My wish for you, my customer, is that you will feel that connection to nature when you use them. That washing your hands with my lavender soap will whisk you off to a Summers afternoon, sitting in the garden or in that massaging my hand cream into your sore hands, you will feel the power of the calendula flower that is contained within.

It is my flowers and the natural world around me that fill me with inspiration daily and there is nothing I love more than to sit on a gorgeous sunny evening with a cuppa and just take it all in. One of lifes truly simple pleasures.