Body & Soul: Grow a Complexion Garden

Grow your own healthy-complexion garden with our handy plant list.

August/September 2009
By Janice Cox 
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This collection of common garden plants can be used to make your own beauty products and treatments.
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Whether you have a pot full of fresh herbs or a whole yard full of produce, green plants are beneficial to your well-being. We benefit from spring and summer days spent outdoors tending to our growing plants. Gardens are places where we can clear our minds, exercise our bodies, and fill our tables with an assortment of fresh vegetables, flowers and herbs.

Many of us have gotten back to our roots and planted gardens or expanded our existing plots. This year, you can expand your plantings with a “healthy-complexion garden.” This collection of common garden plants will give your complexion a boost and can be used to create your own bath and body products. If you don’t want to plant a garden or don’t have the space, you can still reap the benefits of fresh produce by visiting your local farmers’ markets or “you-pick” farms. 

RELATED CONTENT

4 Complexion Garden Beauty Recipes

• Soothing Cucumber Splash
• Relaxing Lavender Bath
• Herbal Body Scrub
• Pineapple Sage Facial Mask 

• Complexion Garden Plant List

Find a Farm

Pick-your-own farms and community gardens offer the ability to harvest fresh produce for little to no cost, while supporting your local community.

• www.pickyourown.org
• www.communitygarden.org
• www.suite101.com/blog/jamiemcintosh/pick_your_own_produce_farms 

Try These

Don’t have time to whip up our recipes? You can have healthy skin with these Herb Companion picks.

• Pre-Party Prep by Eköh, $35
• Mojito White Chocolate Sugar Scrub by Sweet Beauty, $22
• Pore Perfecting Toner by Dickinson’s Original Witch Hazel, $2.60

Janice Cox is the author of Natural Beauty from the Garden (Henry Holt and Company, 1999). She recently co-authored a book with her daughter, Lauren Cox, called EcoBeauty—Scrubs, Rubs, Masks, and Bath Bombs for You and Your Friends (Ten Speed Press, 2009). Look for it in bookstores this fall.

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  • Judy Siegrist 9/1/2009 5:18:26 PM

    Having relied on natural skin care for years, I especially enjoyed this article which I read, in its entirety in the September issue of Herb Companion. Being a huge lavender fan, my favorite recipe was the one for "Relaxing Lavender Bath". HOwever, rose water is my favorite, and most versitile herbal personal care item. I use it to soften and tone my skin, condition and fragrance my hair, as a natural deodorant and even to moisten my toothbrush before dipping into homemade tooth powder.

    The natural C properties in rose water make it an ideal beauty lotion, either all by itself or mixed into an emulsion with jojoba or grapeseed oil. I spray some on my hands to soften them, even the cuticles. I use food grade rosewater in the kitchen in place of vanilla to impart a truly old-fasioned flavor to baked goods, especially pound cake and waverly cookies - all good for the complexion of course :)

    In my opinion, old fashioned damask, gallica, or apothecary roses should be a part of any herb garden! Making rosewater is not difficult as long as you use the right type of organically grown rose.

  • Pam Owen 8/5/2009 9:07:06 PM

    I would like to see other recipes other than Janice Cox. I have her book and so do alot of others. Please consider other people to share their recipes for the face and body.

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