Pot Pourri is defined as ‘a mixture of dried, naturally fragrant plant material’.
Just because it’s winter, and not an ideal time for drying flowers, it doesn’t mean that you can’t make an interesting perfumed selection of other materials to display in a bowl on the coffee table. Choose a mix of textures and colours for variety and buy an essential oil of your choice – here I’ve used a whole 12 ml bottle of Rosemary essential oil.
Nut shells, dried leaves and petals absorb essential oils and retain perfume - avoid using ground spices as they are powdery and make the mix look dusty as well as falling to the bottom of your bowl. You could add dehydrated fruit to this mix too. The cinnamon sticks have been tied in bunches with string.
To supplement the nuts and spices in this mix and also to add a softer and different texture, dried shitake mushrooms and lily petals were bought from an Asian supermarket. Also, fresh lemon verbena leaves were dried – they already have a lovely perfume and soak up oils well - but other dried leaves are fine too. The nuts here are walnuts, almonds in the shell, chestnuts, and eucalyptus gum nuts.
The volume you choose depends on the container you would like to display the pot pourri in. Here it looks lovely in a shallow long wooden tray with t-lights in glass holders interspersed.
Just because it’s winter, and not an ideal time for drying flowers, it doesn’t mean that you can’t make an interesting perfumed selection of other materials to display in a bowl on the coffee table. Choose a mix of textures and colours for variety and buy an essential oil of your choice – here I’ve used a whole 12 ml bottle of Rosemary essential oil.
Nut shells, dried leaves and petals absorb essential oils and retain perfume - avoid using ground spices as they are powdery and make the mix look dusty as well as falling to the bottom of your bowl. You could add dehydrated fruit to this mix too. The cinnamon sticks have been tied in bunches with string.
To supplement the nuts and spices in this mix and also to add a softer and different texture, dried shitake mushrooms and lily petals were bought from an Asian supermarket. Also, fresh lemon verbena leaves were dried – they already have a lovely perfume and soak up oils well - but other dried leaves are fine too. The nuts here are walnuts, almonds in the shell, chestnuts, and eucalyptus gum nuts.
The volume you choose depends on the container you would like to display the pot pourri in. Here it looks lovely in a shallow long wooden tray with t-lights in glass holders interspersed.