Rose has been with me all through the year, from the
sun-kissed days of winter to the rain and gales of summer and beyond. She has
brought great happiness, not just to me but to everyone who has stooped to
smell her perfume or breathed in the scent of her many products before tasting.
Everyone she has touched has stopped, smiled and complimented her. She has been
a wonderful ally.
I have two major rose varieties in my gardens. The
apothecary’s rose, rosa gallica and the David Austin old English rose, WilliamShakespeare. While the former has been used medicinally since the dawn of time,
to use the latter is probably a surprise to most rose growers who don’t
automatically gather their roses for culinary, cosmetic and medicinal
purposes.
Roses have always been a harvested garden crop. In medieval
times, three major roses would have been grown – apothecary’s rose, also known
as the Red Rose of Lancaster, the white rose (rosa alba semi-plena -the white
rose of York) and the damask rose (rosa damascena). Their ruling planets were Jupiter (red rose),
the moon (white rose) and Venus (damask rose).
Rose petals were used historically to treat diarrhoea,
bronchial infections, coughs, colds, chest complaints, nervous tension and
lethargy. The distilled water was prescribed for eye inflammations, to refresh
the spirits and to strengthen the heart. Rose oil was applied to chapped skins
and Gerard said that roses would “staunch bleeding in any part of the body”.
The scent of rose has been used to perfume everywhere from
churches (using scented oil in incense burners before the altar) to rooms (in
pot pourris) to individual bodies as part of a floral water, a lotion, cream or
massage oil. The petals can also be eaten in salads, crystallised or made into
syrups, jams, jellies or vinegars. Rose water (a distilled essence of rose) has
been used to flavour confectionary (notably Turkish delight), jellies, sauces
and both sweet and savoury dishes.
The Catholic rosary was originally named because the beads
were made from rose petals. It is a long and somewhat tedious process according
to Henriette Kress, who told me that she wouldn’t consider making another set
after her original one, unless she really wanted to make one for a friend. Her method
can be found here. She recommends taking out your rose beads when you need love, gentleness,
courage or some prickliness.
Henriette believes rose petals to be calming and
mood-lifting, helping with anger and frustration and giving you courage to
defend your opinions and boundaries so that you can like yourself and others
more. She recommends rose petals for menstrual irritability either in the form
of a tea or a bath. The tea can also be used for menstrual cramps or irregular
menses. This comes from rose’s decongestant action in the female reproductive
system. Rose has also been used to treat
impotence in men and can ease heart palpitations.
Avicenna was the first person to make rose water in the 10th
century. He used rose jelly to cure anyone who spat blood (usually a sign of TB
or other serious illnesses). Anne
MacIntyre gives a account of the many different myths about roses in her wonderful
book, The Complete Floral Healer. She very kindly stepped in at the last minute
to provide a herb walk during my festival in September and had everyone
spellbound as she talked about the plants she encountered in the Sanctuary.
My favourite part of her talk was about the rose. I had not
heard before that according to Eastern traditions, when a soul knocked at the
door of the next world and all material things had to be left behind, only the
red rose was allowed to accompany that soul over the threshold because it was
considered to be part of the spiritual realms.
Annie fell in love with the scent of the William Shakespeare
rose, telling us she often prescribed her patients to smell a rose three times
a day to help improve their overall health.
This is such a simple and effective idea I have started using it with
other heavily scented plants such as rosemary in an attempt to support others
in helping themselves.
Annie also writes about the energetic properties of rose.
She says, “The red rose increases confidence in those feeling insecure about
their sexuality and who suffer from feelings of shame or timidity about their
bodies. It help you to open up to love and bring your desires into action.
“The white rose is quietly inspiring and strengthening,
renewing energy and joy in oyur life. The white rosebud can be given to infants
and children to help them grow up, keeping a sense of heaven on earth.
“The wild rose is the remedy of independence. It is traditionally
said to mean ‘pleasure and pain’ as it brings pleasure to the eyes and heart
when found blooming in the wild, but pain from its sharp prickles if you try to
pluck it. Wild rose warms the heart and softens the emotions, engendering an
easy-going feeling to enhance sensuality.”
I really understand what she means about the wild rose. In
my part of the world, this is the dog rose (rosa canina), although I have come
across both the briar rose (rosa rubiginosa) and rosa rugosa growing wild in
Northumberland; briar rose around a former children’s TB sanatorium near
Morpeth and rosa rugosa on the coal-filled cliffs and sand dunes opposite St
Mary’s lighthouse, Whitley Bay.
Gathering dog rose petals means time to be by myself, to
study how the flower buds open, how the petals fall or are blown away by strong
breezes and how the buds grow in clusters of up to eight or more. This is
revealed more fully when bright red hips form in autumn, when I found some
bushes by Olton canal only producing single berries, whereas those in my
Sanctuary and surrounding fields had groups of between four and eight.
Rosehips also reveal the different species of bush.
Apothecary’s rosehips are so small as to be almost non-existant, leaving wild
rosehips to be the one of choice for collecting, but even those are different
shapes and sizes. The largest I have ever found were in the Friary field last
winter and I’m looking forward to seeing if they grow to such size again.
Cotswold rosehips seem the usual shape and size, but the canalside ones are
small and round, leading me to wonder if they were rosehips at all if I hadn’t
been sure of their identification through their leaves.
I throw rosehips into most syrups and cordials and quite a
few other concoctions because of their high vitamin C content. Looking at some
of their other properties – strengthens the lungs in fighting infections, wards
against colds and coughs, helps to fight
infection in the digestive tract and helps re-establish normal bacterial population
of the intestine when it has been disrupted by antibiotics or faulty diet – they
seem the ideal support food or drink for winter.
My daughter has been suffering from recurring infections in
her wisdom tooth which the dentist has suggested might come from a lack of
fruit and vegetables in her diet, so I gave her one of the rosehip syrups to
take home with her and take a spoonful every day.
My stocks of dried
rosehips have all been used up so this autumn I have been gathering large
basketfuls to replenish my empty larder jars and make some rosehip syrup for
the first time. The bags of hips are still drying in my hot cupboard and
although the syrup was made, it seemed to produce very little juice from a
large number of hips, so I may try again later in the winter when the hips are
softer and sweeter.
I have made many potions from rose this year as well as
drying several bags of petals despite appalling weather conditions when
harvesting. Tinctures, vinegars, tonics, syrups and elixirs have all graced my
shelves along with a newcomer - the rose double infused oil. I was also really pleased to be able to put up
another batch of Kiva Rose Hardin’s, “Burns Honey” as my bergomot flowered
again this year after restocking the plant last spring.
With the rose oil I made a simple rose cream with rose
tincture and beeswax. The inspiration came from Leslie Postin’s blog and she,
in turn, used Lucinda Warner’s recipe from her blog. We made it as part of last
Saturday’s “Oils and Salves” workshop. I’d never had any success with creams
before so I was somewhat anxious about the outcome, especially as I could not
obtain either a rose hydrosol or any glycerine and when I went to look for my
last piece of cocoa butter in the larder, it hid!
Simple Rose Cream
8 fl ozs Apothecary’s rose petal double infused oil
1 fl oz Aloe vera gel scraped from the inside of three large
leaves
5 fl ozs Apothecary’s rose petal tincture
1oz grated beeswax from the beekeeper who lives in the next
road.
We measured out the oil and heated it in the top of a double
boiler with the grated beeswax, stirring gently with a wooden spoon until it
melted. This liquid was then poured into a large plastic bowl which was
suspended inside another bowl of cold water and the oil was again stirred until
it was almost cool. I used a stick blender to emulsify the cooling salve as the
tincture and aloe vera gel were slowly poured into the mixture. The blending
continued until the cream was thoroughly emulsified. It looked pale and fluffy
and was very slightly pink in colour.
The scent was very subtle but I was very impressed with the
result. If you wanted a stronger smelling cream you could add drops of rose
essential oil or a fragrance which pleases you. We put the cream into some
recycled jars my sister had gifted me the previous weekend.
What really delighted me was the fact that I had made and
grown all the ingredients myself except the beeswax, which I had collected on
foot.
The other great success this year has been rose elixir.
When my daughter shut her finger in a door earlier this year and called for “Mother’s
Emergency Service”, I dosed her with rose elixir while I bandaged her damaged digit.
She was soon calm and sufficiently restored to go off to give her piano lesson
followed by a shift in the hotel where she then worked.
At the beginning of September I was asked to provide a
medicinal herb demonstration in the kitchen garden at Calke Abbey. Many of the
volunteers on duty that day came to see me and waxed so poetical about the
stress relieving effects of the rose elixir that the organiser came and sat down
with me for a good twenty minutes. She asked
if she could take the elixir away with her as it made her feel so much better!
Rose has been a wonderful ally this year. She is a perfect
companion teaching me close observation whilst providing a calm and unhurried
world in which to inhabit. Although I shall choose another ally in the coming
months, I know rose will always be at my side.
