Herbs for Health & Beauty

Parsley has been known to minimize swelling and redness of the skin around irritated eyes. It also lightens and evens out discoloured skin tone. You can make a parsley honey mask to reduce blackheads and wrinkles. Here is a recipe:

2 tablespoons of chopped parsley

1 egg yolk

1 tablespoon of honey

Mix parsley and egg yolk in a blender. Add honey and blend. Apply to neck and face and leave on for 20 minutes. Rinse with warm water.

For more ideas, be sure to attend the Horticultural Therapy Teaching Session on DIY Health & Beauty Products on August 23rd, 7-8 pm in the GEG.

Garden Art with Playsense Teens

A lovely day to be in the Garden. Playsense visited and did some artwork that involved a tracing of their hand incorporated with images from nature.

The Garden provided us with inspiration as we worked with a wide variety of art supplies.

Everyone should be very proud of their work in the Garden today!

The Garden's Blooming Beautifully

Here are some snapshots of some of the raised beds at the GEG. Above is Independent Living's bed filled with marigolds, impatiens, cornflower, sweet peas, and strawflowers.

Riverside Glen's bed is doing well. Dahlias are peeking out to enjoy the view.

The kiwi vine is filled with lots of miniature kiwi fruit.

Riverside Residences' bed is overflowing with interesting sights.

Flower Pounding Postcards

Flower pounding is a technique of taking fresh flowers and pounding their natural dyes onto paper. In this case, we pounded them onto blank postcards.
Here is a participant putting her chosen flower between the blank postcard and another white absorptive paper. She pounds the flower with a hammer to impress the dye onto the paper.

Watercolour paint or markers can be used to embellish the designs to make neat, imaginative pictures.

Playing with Puppets

Nathan Gatten's puppet show was a great success when kids came to visit the GEG last month. The play introduced the kids to the features of our accessible garden and some of the cool interactions that occur in it. Great job, Nathan!