Beauty in basket of green goodies
◆ Ilona Amos meets Dr Sally Gouldstone, entrepreneur behind Edinburgh-based Seilich, whose sustainable approach to distilling essential oils from wild plants is no mere cosmetic exercise
It took a while to learn the art of distilling essential oils, according to entrepreneur Dr Sally Gouldstone, and she admits “there was a fragrant explosion or two” before she got it right.
“But practice has made perfect,” she says. “And, six years on, I feel I’ve finally got the hang of it.”
Today, Sally, a qualified botanist, runs her own natural beauty firm, Seilich, on the outskirts of Edinburgh.
Her career path and passion for nature was inspired by her upbringing on a remote farm in a forest in Lancashire.
“I grew up in a very kind of wild way – I absolutely loved it,” Sally remembers. “I was just fascinated by nature, and I was always bringing things in. We looked after lots of wild animals, like little deer and rabbits and tadpoles, newts and leverets.”
After studying biology and ecology at the University of Edinburgh and the city’s Royal Botanic Garden, she spent around 20 years working on environmental projects across the globe.
Past adventures involved trips to some of the world’s most famous wildlife hotspots, including Madagascar and Borneo, and she even bumped into David Attenborough “in the middle of nowhere”, while he was filming his hit show Life of Mammals.
Today, though, she is more of a home bird, having set up Seilich in 2018, shortly after becoming a mother.
“I wanted to start a business that would give me control of my time a bit more, but I was so keen to carry on working with nature,” she says.
“Isawitasabitofan opportunity to reset things and look for some kind of work-life balance where I had more control over my day-today life, and I could therefore feel a bit freer in the decisions that I was making.”
She began by growing some wild flowers in a neighbour’s plot, which she used to develop her first products – which involved quite a bit of experimentation and a few minor disasters.
“If you use the wrong part of the plant in the wrong part of the still, the pressure can build upandthenyougeta huge bang as the lid blows off the top,” she explains.
“Distilling essential oil is a traditional skill that not many people still practice in Scotland, so it was only from reading books and trying it out that I learnt.”
Sally was encouraged by the response when selling her first concoctions at a local market. “People who bought things from me really loved the idea that I’d grown the plants in this semi-wild setting,” she recalls.
The ethos of Seilich – the Gaelic word for willow – is to work in partnership with nature, with the environment a priority in all aspects of the business, and profits used to replenish and restore habitats.
“I saw a lot of businesses that relied on nature in some way had a kind of one-way relationship with it, and were just taking things,” she says. “I was keen to have more of a circular business model where we were putting back. The idea behind Seilich is to have a conservation project that was funded by a business.”
Sally’s company produces a range of products, all created using wild plants
I was keen to have more of a circular business model where we were putting back
hand-picked from Seilach’s two meadows in deepest Midlothian, as well as natural, organic, and ecofriendly ingredients grown elsewhere in the UK.
Special care is taken when harvesting the plants to ensure there are plenty left for the local wildlife to thrive, with only 10 per cent of each specific species gathered.
And now Seilich lotions and potions – from moisturisers, cleansers, face oils, and lip balms to face masks and serums, hand creams, and even herbal teas – can be found on the shelves at several outlets as well as online.
Seilich stockists include Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh; the Scottish Seabird Centre in North Berwick; Hanover Healthfoods in the Capital; Restoration Yard at Dalkeith Country Park, and Bayley and Sage outlets in west London.
The botanist is proud of her achievements so far, with a string of accolades – winning the Beauty Shortlist’s Best Wildcrafted Beauty Brand of 2022; becoming the
first UK company to have gained Wildlife Friendly® certification, and making the green business shortlist in the RSPB’S Nature of Scotland Awards in both 2021 and again last year.
But even more so, Sally is determined that her business will be both sustainable and environmentally positive.
“I wanted to create habitats – wild spaces for nature, predominantly wild-flower meadows – and harvest our ingredients from them and then use our profits to feed back into managing these spaces and creating more of them,” she says, adding: “More businesses need to do this.
“The biodiversity crisis is just so huge and fundamental to life on Earth. We can’t just leave this in the sphere of charities and non-profit organisations, this has got to become mainstream.
“I want to show that a business model works – where you are doing the right thing and a bit extra. So, hopefully, one day all businesses will be doing the right thing.”