Mother Nature’s Pantry: Potpourri Recipes

Spice up your hospitality and generosity this winter with a few festive potpourri fragrances.

Use all-natural ingredients to combine the scents of the season and fill the air with cheer.

Pine Cone Potpourri

The holiday season is a perfect time to make potpourri for your home or for gifts. Try this simple and festive recipe from A World Of Plenty:

Ingredients:
8 pounds of pine cones
3/4 ounce bayberry fragrance oil
1/4 ounce cinnamon fragrance oil
1/4 ounce clove fragrance oil
1/4 ounce orange fragrance oil

Fill a trash bag a little over half full with pine cones. Drop the oils in over the cones, and mix them in the bag so that the oils are distributed evenly over all the cones. Fasten the top of the trash bag and leave the pine cones for a couple days to pick up the scent of the blended oils.

You can add cinnamon sticks, pine boughs and flower pedals to the mix to add more fragrance and color to the potpourri.

“Display in decorative baskets or bowls along with, for color and variety, long cinnamon sticks, tangerines orpomegranates, cedar tips, or your own cut evergreen tips. Or keep by the fireplace and toss in for a quick burst of scent.”

Holiday Herbs

This potpourri recipe from the Herb Companion is a little more intensive than the pine cone recipe, but it makes a potpourri from dry ingredients, which creates a “mild, sweet, almost candylike scent.”

Ingredients:
4 cups of rose petals
2 1/2 cups lavender flowers
2 cups each anise hyssop flowers, flowering tops of peppermint, pink rosebuds, oakmoss, and sweet woodruff leaves
1/2 cup each allspice berries, aniseed, and cloves
1 cup each cinnamon chips, rosemary (or substitute pine or fir needles), holy basil tops (or substitute sweet Annie or increase the aniseed), and chopped calamus root
1 vanilla bean, chopped in 1/4-inch pieces
1/2 teaspoon tangerine fragrance oil
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon fragrance oil
1/4 teaspoon pine or fir fragrance oil

Combine the dry ingredients together and stir them gently until mixed, then add the fragrance oils the the mixture. Let the mixture rest in sealed jars for at least two weeks.

Display your potpourri in a large glass jar or a basket, or give your potpourri as a gift in a jar or tin. You can also fill sachets with your potpourri to spread the scents in your closets and drawers.