How We Create our Limited Edition Pot Pourri - Part One

Our Limited Edition Pot Pourri is lovingly created in small batches from within our heritage rose gardens. Unlike the musty, harshly scented pot pourri mixes that I remember from the 1980s, which were unappealing mixes of dried wood shavings and garish artificially dyed flowers, our Limited Edition Pot Pourris (as well as our Artisan Apothecary blends) begin in our heritage rose gardens. We use antique roses that we grow for their lovely rose fragrance, such as the gorgeous and ancient Kazanlik rose (below) prized in Bulgaria for its strong fragrance used to create priceless essential rose oil and rose water.

This ancient Damask rose predates the 1600s, and only blooms once a year, making its petals very precious. We gather these and carefully air dry them to preserve as much of their fragrance as possible. To ensure we have scented petals available from November to May for our Pot Pourri and Apothecary petals, we grow a curated selection of highly scented heritage roses in our gardens.

These have been chosen after trialling numerous heritage roses for their scent over many years in our previous large country garden. And we have used this knowledge to fill our current Hunter Valley garden with a curated selection of strongly scented heritage roses. Of course, we're obsessed with sourcing more rare, highly scented roses to add to our heritage collection.

Gathering rose petals at the peak of their scent is a labour of love, requiring an intimate knowledge of each heritage rose in our gardens and the best time for harvesting. It may seem strange, but each rose has its own unique fragrance which may not be apparent until a certain stage of the bloom cycle. It is this experience of growing and harvesting each rose at the most optimum time, that enables us to gather the blooms so we can capture their fragrance.

The precious scented petals are gathered at just the right time while they are still at their peak, and then gently placed in cane baskets so as not to bruise them. The petals are left in their basket in a cool, dark area for an hour or so to allow any beneficial insects to escape. We want to keep these insects in the gardens, not gather them into the studio for drying!

After sorting through the basket of rose petals, discarding damaged and bruised petals, they're layered on our antique drying racks or into the air dryer, depending on the level of humidity in the atmosphere. The volume of fresh petals reduces down by at least one third of the original volume after drying. This can be fairly disheartening after having gathered baskets overflowing with fresh rose petals. By the way, we always store our dried petals in glass or pottery containers, never plastic tubs or containers as plastic will tarnish the final scent.

So as you can see, the process of growing scented heritage roses for use in creating our Limited Edition Pot Pourri and Artisan Apothecary ranges takes years of planning. I haven't gone into the process of how I have taken years to research suitable heritage roses historically grown for their fragrance, let alone trying to find these roses as many of them are quite rare now. Perhaps another time I'll do a post on this process. For now, it's worth knowing that it can take at a minimum, two years of growth from bare root rose to producing enough blooms for harvesting. It is especially important to give a rose time to establish in the garden before harvesting, as most of the roses grown for scent are once flowering only, which makes their petals especially precious!

In Part Two of How We Create our Limited Edition Pot Pourri, I'll talk through the process of how we actually make it from our dried scented rose petals, using age old methods handed down from one housekeeper or gardener to the other. The history of these recipes in itself is fascinating.

Until then, enjoy your scented roses or look for them in your neighbourhood!

xxLillian