Beauty from your Backyard: Facial Care

Hair, face, and skin care from our backyard is one of the gifts the garden shares in beauty and generosity. On July 11, Herbalist Emily Ruff will be offering a Backyard Beauty workshop online, full of recipes and tips for finding radiant glow from your backyard garden.

Emily’s herbal mentor, Rosemary Gladstar, is legendary in the herbal world and serves as a source of inspiration for many of Emily’s personal beauty care recipes. One of Rosemary’s tried and true recipes is her cleansing Miracle Grains, a simple blend of kitchen ingredients that brings softness and healing to the face as a daily cleanser or a mask.

Rosemary writes “cleansing grains are a perfect soap replacement; mild, nourishing, suitable for all skins types and can be used daily. I’ve tried most cleaning grains on the market. Some are quite nice, but my own simple recipe remains my favorite. I can mix and blend it to suit myself. It’s inexpensive enough that I can use it as a total body scrub. And it’s completely biodegradable and even quite tasty – I could eat it in a pinch!”

Miracle Grains Recipe

2 cups white clay
1 cup finely ground oats
1/4 cup finely ground almonds
1/8 cup finely ground lavender
1/8 cup finely ground roses

Reference: Rosemary Gladstar’s Recipes for Vibrant Health book; Page 127.

Emily likes to mix a teaspoonful of Rosemary’s Miracle Grains with water as a daily cleanser, or with honey as a weekly mask. Other additions include poppy seeds for extra exfoliation, mixing with aloe or papaya for a skin clearing treatment, or mixing with milk (dairy or nondairy) for extra hydration.

Learn about these recipes and more in Emily’s Backyard Beauty class on July 11!