HERBAL SKINCARE CLASS

 

I’m excited to share that my HERBAL SKINCARE CLASS will be on Saturday March 21st here on Spring Street from 10:30-2:30. Learn how to make your own gorgeous Organic and Natural Skincare, customized for your skin and as great gifts for family and friends.

The skin is an organ and what you put on it is absorbed into the body. This is why I am passionate that skincare should not only be effective, but so pure you could eat it! The class will be an opportunity to explore how herbs can work on the inside and the outside for your best possible skin. Our day will include:

An introduction to the best herbs to take internally for skin, how to take them and which herbs target specific skin challenges. Learn all about herbs for external use including oils, butters, waxes, aromatic waters and much more.

We'll make:

•  Unique HERBAL SKIN TEA BLEND. •   A beautifully rich LIP BALM with emollient oils, cocoa butter, shea butter, coconut oil, beeswax and essential oils. • Fabulous HAND & BODY LOTION which smells as good as it feels and brings together the smoothing and softening properties of Aloe Vera, Rosewater, Beeswax, Jojoba Oil, Rosehip Oil and Infused Oils and Essential Oils. • Your very own, custom-blended FACE OIL. High end mainstream cosmetics manufacturers recognize the incredible skin benefits of pure and rare oils. With their products costing as much as $90 for a 1oz bottle, learning to  make your own not only saves you a lot of money but, crucially, means you can experiment with different blends to get the one that’s just right for your skin. I’ll introduce you to the oils and help you blend a 1oz bottle to take  home with you on the day.

The class will be kept small and everyone will go home with a pack of Skin Tea, a lip balm, a bottle of Hand & Body Lotion and their own custom-blended skin oil.

Class fee is $90 per person. Contact me at paula@paulagrainger.com for more information or to reserve your place.

Holiday Gift Making Class

Join English Herbalist Paula Grainger for a fun & festive morninglearning how to make your own Beautiful and Natural Holiday Gifts.

Using the finest all-natural ingredients you’ll learn how to create your own handmade cosmetics as gifts and for your own use for years to come.

You’ll take home all the recipes plus a selection of gifts for this Holiday Season including:

4 x Chocolate Peppermint Lip Balm with cocoa butter

3 x Gardener’s Hand Salve with Rosemary & Thyme

2 x Orange Cinnamon Body Lotion with Jojoba oil and Orange Flower Water

SUNDAY NOV. 23RD 10-12.30 Numbers are very limited so email paula@paulagrainger.com to secure your place. $75 per person. Cash or checks payable to Paula Grainger www..paulagrainger.com

Year long Garden Herbalism Course starts October 2014

I'll be back in class with Darren Huckle Lac from October teaching our Garden Herbalism course. If you're in the Santa Cruz area, please do join us - all the details are below or contact me or Darren for further details.

Two Tuesdays/month: 5:15pm - 7:15pm Oct. 14, 2014 - June 9th, 2015 *see actual dates below*

For thousands of years, people have been harvesting medicines from their home gardens for basic family needs. This is a dynamic and hands-on introduction to the art and practical application of garden herbalism. We will spend over half our time outdoors in an herbal garden where we will harvest common herbs and discuss their uses and cultivation. We will then bring them into the herbal pharmacy classroom and learn how to make effective teas, oils and remedies for commonly encountered health challenges including but not limited to stress, sleeplessness, indigestion, and minor wounds.

By effectively preparing and using herbs, we inspire and empower the healer within. This work rejuvenates the senses and steeps us in the wonder of nature's healing powers. Participants will be exposed to an abundance of practical and easily implemented information, and will get the opportunity to bring a sampling of plants into their own home gardens.

Darren Huckle, Lac, DAOM is an instructor and practitioner in Western and Chinese Herbal Medicine with 15 years of intensive study in the use of Western Herbs. Paula Grainger BSc, MNIMH is an English Medical Herbalist who has brought her training and knowledge of traditional and modern European Herbal Medicine with her from London to Santa Cruz. Together they have decades of experience and passion in treating patients and teaching the public about natural medicine.

Class Location: Seabright Class Dates (all classes held 5:15pm - 7:15pm): Oct. 14 & 28 Nov. 11 & 25 Dec. 9 Jan. 12 & 26 Feb. 10 & 24 Mar. 10 & 24 Apr. 14 & 28 May 12 & 26 June 9

Small Class size! Space is limited Registration due September 30th Cost: $400 Pay by cash or check only. Make check out to Darren Huckle and mail to 343 Frederick St., Santa Cruz 95062

Regents Park Herb Walk

 

First thing last Monday morning I found myself in Regents Park. There is is something very special about being in such a popular place when everyone else is at school or work. A sense of bunking off, which appeals to the teenager in me. And of course, very few people were there so i enjoyed the rare feeling of having the park to myself on a sunny day in London.

I was meeting a friend at the Garden Cafe, which is in the Inner Circle near to the Rose Garden, so I took a detour and wandered through the fragrant beds filled with roses of every colour. Rose is one of my favourite herbs. The wonderful herbalist Christopher Hedley always says it is like 'a hug in a bottle' and I've found him to be right again and again. It's wonderfully uplifting and you only need a tiny amount of the tincture in a mix or a handful of dried petals in a tea to work its magic.  The essential oil is terribly expensive, but there is nothing like a few drops in a bath - except perhaps a wander through a rose garden on a sunny blue early summer morning, with the evaporating dew carrying this heavenly scent from the petals into the air.

The rose beds are pretty traditional and formal, but there are high posts encircling the main garden, with loops of rope slung between, supporting great swags of climbing roses. If you can tear your senses away from the roses and look around the base of each gatepost, you'll find herbs planted all around. I rather love this photo I snapped of a climbing rose blossoming low on the stem veiled by  a haze of Bronze fennel. Bronze Fennel is very decorative and has just the same medicinal and culinary properties as the more usual green variety. In my Herbal practice I use the seeds, as they are a great carminative, easing bloating and digestive discomfort. I also give them as a tea to new mums as they help stimulate milk production and reduce colic in the baby. Growing fennel to harvest seeds means growing a lot of it, but whichever part of the plant you use, those aniseedy oils will promote good digestion. If you have some in your garden, the feathery leaves make a pretty garnish and the bulbs make one of my favourite summer salads, sliced and roasted in the oven with fresh tomatoes and plenty of olive oil and rock salt.

Anyone who has been on one of my herb walks will know I am enchanted with the diversity of medicinal plants growing in Regents Park. From the St Johns Wort growing wild at the back of the zoo to the hawthorn hedges and the Lime trees which will be dripping with their fragrant linden flowers in just a few weeks time. But did you know there is a hidden corner of the park where a remarkable medicinal herb garden flourishes? The Royal College of Physicians' is the large modernist building tucked in at the South Easternmost corner of the park, a couple of minutes from Great Portland Street tube.  I'm delighted to say they have agreed for me to host a midsummer herb walk (a stroll really, it's quite small) to celebrate Herbal Medicine Week. . Details as below:

Tuesday 21st June 2011. Meet at 6pm  in the forecourt of The Royal College of Physicians 11 St Andrews Place, London NW1 4LE. £10 per person (£5 concs). Contact Paula at lemonbalmonline@mac.com