Make your own herbal air fresheners

Jane Wrigglesworth shows how to create heavenly scents for your home using purely natural ingredients.

5 DIY recipes from natural ingredients.

Ancient peoples made incense from herbs and flowers to perfume the air, and strewed fragrant plants onto the floor.

Iam on a scent-seeking mission. I want to sweeten my home with natural ingredients. Herbs, flowers and other aromatics can do that – they’re a peachy palette for natural perfumes, and I am currently waist-deep in fragrant flora to sniff out the possibilities.

Freshly picked herbs and flowers will easily act as air fresheners, whether gently simmered on the stove for several minutes until the scent permeates the air, or infused in alcohol for later use as an ingredient in room sprays.

Herbal housekeeping is an age-old practice. Ancient peoples made incense from herbs and flowers to perfume the air, and strewed fragrant plants onto the floor to scent rooms, and repel bugs and diseases. If you consult The Compleat

Housewife by Eliza Smith (1727), you’ll find perfectly good recipes for sweetening the air. Eliza’s “sweet bag for linen” (recipe on the next page) could easily double as potpourri, another ancient craft, thought to have been devised in the 12th century to freshen up various rooms in castles.

Basic room spray

The simplest room spray you can make is to mix together 125ml vodka or gin ( both neutral alcohols), 125ml distilled water and 15-20 drops of your favourite essential oil or oil mix. Pour this into a spray bottle and use it to freshen your rooms. Or you can take a mix of Eliza’s dried ingredients and infuse them in alcohol for 7-10 days to draw out the scent.

However, when using fresh flowers, use a grain alcohol (ethanol) at 95 per cent alcohol (you can also use cosmetic-grade denatured ethanol). Ordinary vodka is usually 40-50 per cent alcohol. So at 50 per cent alcohol (that’s also known as 100 proof vodka – the percentage is doubled to get the proof), there is 50 per cent water, and that much water causes fresh materials to rot.

(It’s a good idea when using fresh flowers, to remove any pistils, stamens and calyxes first. Hardcore perfume makers will go a step further and change out the fresh petals after a day.)

Place your flowers or fresh herbs in a clean jar, pour alcohol over the top to just cover and mix gently. Then secure the lid. Leave for a day, then strain out the petals using a cheesecloth or piece of muslin, squeezing out the alcohol. Add more flowers and herbs, without adding more alcohol, and leave for another day. Repeat this several times. At least six changes is the norm, though some perfumers will swap out the plant material 10 or even 20 times. Use this as a perfume, or dilute it with water to make a room spray. Or for a quick, more visually appealing alternative, make the basic room spray, as above, then add whole dried flowers or herbs to the bottle. The plant materials should be thoroughly dried or they will rot.

Clay air freshener

This is a great idea for cars or for hanging in wardrobes or small rooms. Buy air-drying terracotta clay (from craft stores), roll out on wax paper to 6-8mm thick and

Powdered orris root is used as a fixative in perfumes and potpourri… you can use it as a dry shampoo.

cut into shapes with a cookie cutter. Try an angel or a heart shape.

Poke a hole in the top to allow for hanging, then leave to dry according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Once dry, add 3-4 drops of essential oil and hang. Over time, the essential oil will lose its fragrance. Add more oil as necessary. Burning perfume

Make what Eliza Smith called a “burning perfume”, otherwise known as incense, to perfume your

home (her recipe is in the box on the left). Benjamin is benzoin, which is available from online natural supplies stores, such as Pure Nature and Go Native.

I don’t have damask rose in my garden, but I do have rose geranium, which makes an excellent alternative. And I use ground coriander and cumin seeds in place of musk and civet.

If it all sounds too time-consuming, simply crush some cardamom pods and use these on their own as a burning agent.

Orris root & other recipe ingredients

Orris root comes from three closely related irises: Iris

germanica, Iris germanica var. florentina and Iris pallida. Their essential oils contain irone, which smells something like violets. But if growing your own, you need patience. When freshly dug, the roots smell earthy rather than floral. You need to leave them to dry for at least two years for the scent to emerge. Powdered orris root is used as a fixative in perfumes and potpourri – it absorbs the volatile oils of flowers and herbs to keep them from rapidly evaporating. You can use it as a dry shampoo to absorb oils from the scalp and to impart a pleasant fragrance.

The powdered root of sweet calamus, also known as sweet flag, comes from Acorus calamus and has a mild cinnamon-like fragrance. It, too, acts as a fixative, as does musk and ambergrease, aka ambergris.

Musk, civet and ambergris were once very fashionable, but they are now rare or unavailable, or even illegal to obtain. They are mostly replaced with a mixture of manufactured and plant-sourced materials. You can use powdered angelica root, coriander or cumin seeds, gum benzoin, myrrh and frankincense, and vanilla pods as alternatives.

Most other ingredients in Eliza’s recipe are easily available, and you can experiment too: try drying and powdering violet leaves to use in floral mixes (they have a soft, leafy scent with a slight floral undertone); it fuses well with rose, lavender, clary sage, basil, cumin, citrus and frankincense. ✤