If your eyes need some soothing during the summer months, perhaps because of hayfever, this is the perfect herbal recipe to make! It is easy to make and contains cornflower, cucumber and aloe vera. If you don’t have aloe vera in your kitchen or garden, you can buy the pure gel in a health food shop. And if the lovely blue cornflower isn’t a resident of your garden, you can use one of the alternative herbs suggested below.

Cornflower (Centaurea Cyanus)

Once a common sight growing wild in our fields, the cornflower is loved for its bright blue flowers. Today it is usually cultivated purposefully in gardens, rather than being found wild.

Although largely ignored by modern herbalism, it has a long history of use to soothe the skin, and in particular the skin around the eyes, due to its astringent and anti-inflammatory properties. In beauty preparations for the hair, it is also said to help darken fair or grey hair.

Recipe: herbal summer soother for eyes

In this recipe we’re going to use an infusion of cornflower petals in a soothing wash for the skin around the eyes. If you don’t have cornflowers, you could use chamomile flowers instead, or if you’re making the recipe in May/ June you could use elderflowers.

Ingredients:

• Half a cup of cornflower petals
• Aloe vera gel (either cut a fresh leaf off of an aloe plant, or use about a dessert spoon of pure aloe gel from a health food shop)
• Cucumber (about quarter of a large cucumber)

Cover the cornflower petals in boiling water and leave to steep for a couple of hours. Strain off the cool liquid. Cut and peel the aloe leaf (careful as its very slippery!) and chop into small pieces. Peel and remove the seeds from the cucumber, and chop into small pieces. Mix together the liquid, aloe, and cucumber in a blender until smooth. Finally, strain this mixture through a piece of muslin or a clean pop sock into a bottle. You can store this in the fridge and use within one week. It could be used in a spray bottle to refresh the skin on the face on a hot day; dabbed around the eyes with cotton wool; or used on a compress over the eyes while you lie back and relax.

Note: the eye wash is for use externally, not in the eyes.

You can find more recipes to make at home in our News area.

Sources:

• The Aromantic Guide to the use of Herbs – Kolbjorn Borseth 2006
  
• Hatfield’s Herbal – Gabrielle Hatfield 2007