PURE MOTIVATION
A nightmare health issue led to a dream of a business for a Nelson couple.
Asick child is every parent’s fear, and so it was for Georgia Richards and Dot Kettle. Night after night they sat up with their little son, Baxter, trying to stop him scratching the eczema that plagued him. He wore specially treated PJS, had his hands wrapped and was covered with steroid cream.
BREAKTHROUGH
The family moved to a 40ha property in the Dove Valley, west of Nelson, where they grew paeonies for the cut-flower market, harvesting their first blooms in 2009.
A couple of years later, when researching ways to grow better paeonies, Georgia stumbled on information about how widely the plants were used in traditional Chinese medicine.
She learned that paeoniflorin, extracted from the roots of Paeonia lactiflora, had antiinflammatory and antioxidant properties. With exquisite flowers that symbolised love, beauty and joy, it was no wonder the Chinese called the paeony the ‘King of Flowers’.
As well as Baxter, their two younger sons Otto and Bruno had eczema issues, so Georgia began work to develop products that could help them.
FIRST PRODUCT
“Our range has been developed as an alternative to steroids, but can be used as well as them. We’re not saying, ‘You can’t use steroids,’ although prolonged use can be detrimental,” Dot explains.
They started with soap. Their powdered paeony root was combined with four vegetable oils and sodium hydroxide – used so the soap would lather. An organic product with no perfume or parabens, and not tested on animals, it “ticked a number of environmentally friendly boxes”, Dot says.
The Pure Peony Body Bar was a winner, not only for their three boys, whose eczema and itches disappeared, but also giving relief to people with dermatitis and psoriasis.
BRANCHING OUT
More products followed, including a range of creams, some combining paeony root with other products, such as mānuka honey.
“Using high-quality ingredients is really important to us,” Georgia says.
“We wanted to give a complete, 100 per cent natural toolkit for the skin.”
Says Dot: “Georgia is our r and D person, getting feedback from customers asking what else we can do to help them.”
One thing they learned was that people without scalp problems but with hand or body psoriasis or eczema could have problems shampooing their hair using conventional shampoos. Just think how you put a dollop on your hand, then rub it in – this process is guaranteed to trigger an adverse reaction in sensitive skins.
Healing Shampoo and Conditioner bars were the answer and they have proved “very, very popular”, according to Dot.
ON THE FARM
Alongside the development of Pure Peony’s award-winning skincare range was the growing and harvesting of the paeony roots needed for the products.
Nelson’s Cawthron Institute helped with testing paeoniflorin levels so Dot and Georgia could grow more of the varieties with the highest levels of the compound.
At the same time, they were growing plants for their blooms, so harvesting had to take this into account. After various experiments, they opted for a modified potato digger, which enabled plants to be lifted undamaged. This meant some of the roots would be harvested, then plants returned to the ground.
Once harvested, roots have to be washed – a carrot washer has proved ideal – then thinly sliced (a bit like making potato crisps) and dried.
NO FLOWERS
“We have 24 different varieties in the ground,” Georgia says.
This season, though, they won’t be picking any flowers.
Blame Covid-19 for that.
At Level 4, flowers were not deemed essential items. At lower levels, the pressure on courier services meant “too much uncertainty, as overnight delivery of flowers is not guaranteed”, Dot says.
Although she admitted that was disappointing, she maintained a positive outlook, saying, it could be “quite good for the plants not to cut the flowers”.
That could mean more roots developing to go into the Pure Peony skincare products, thanks to two motivated Kiwi women.