Karen Lawton

Karen Lawton is one of the Seed SistAs, a co-founder of Sensory Solutions, a mother, a lover, an eco-activist, a gardener. She is to be found in the hedgerows of Hertfordshire, mostly sharing her love of all things green.

Website: sensorysolutions.co.uk

Diary 2018

Daisy in Child’s Hand © Karen Lawton

Diary 2017

Autumnal Delights © Karen Lawton

Diary 2016

Daisy Flower Essence - Spring Equinox © Karen Lawton

Diary 2015

Making Smudge Sticks © Karen Lawton

Smudging allows you to wash away all the emotional and spiritual negativity that gathers in your body and your space over time. It's a little bit like taking a spiritual shower! There is nothing more powerful than using sacred tools you’ve made yourself and smudge sticks are no exception.

1. Choose and harvest your herbs, with stalks at least 30-40cm long to make nice fat smudge sticks. Our main base herb is mugwort.

2. Yarrow, sage and rosemary are our favourite mixes into our sticks. The aromatic herbs tend to burn well and provide the most cleansing and protective actions. The aromatic herbs are high in essential oils which are the plant’s own defence system. The oils burn well with lovely aromas and provide all the protection that they did for the plant.

3. Lay a good bunch of a combination of your herbs but mainly mugwort out in front of you. Match up the stems approximately but you can trim them afterwards. Holding the base of the bunch in one hand, slightly twist the bunch with the other and bend it over so that the ends of the bunch come back down to where you are holding the stems.

4. Now place some twine around the end and bind a couple of times. Then wind the twine upwards and then back down, wrapping the thread around so that as the thread burns away it crisscrosses and stops it from unraveling before you reach the end of your smudge stick.

5. Do a few nice tight rounds at the bottom before tying it tightly with the loose end. Make a loop and hang to dry.

Diary 2017

Several botanical names of our plants derive from Greek and Roman myths. The goddess Diana was the huntress. In Greek her name is Artemis, the moon goddess. It is probably this characteristic that is referred to in the plant name Artemisia, as many of the species are covered with fine down giving them a silvery cast and a semblance of moon glow. We also have Marshmallow with her botanical name Althea after the Greek goddess of Healing. Yarrow is also known as Achillea millefolium named after Achilles the Great Warrior, who gave Yarrow to his soldiers to stop the bleeding from their wounds. It is a ‘styptic’, meaning it is used to staunch the flow of blood.

By personifying the plants and giving them recognisable characteristics, people can connect on deeper levels and remember aspects in clearer ways, forming relations in a novel fashion. Plants are like people, each with their very own individual personality traits. Some you like, some you don’t, some you absolutely fall in love with and some you fear. Recognising these emotions, one can draw parallels with friends and family members and start to see how certain types of people resemble certain types of plants....