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At the heart of all Natura Siberica products, you’ll find potent and efficacious ingredients from wild herbs and flowers grown on our certified organic farm in Saaremaa, an Estonian island in the Baltic Sea.
Estonia is a beautiful European country bordering the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Finland. It’s home to more than 1,500 islands. Saaremaa is the biggest at more than 1,000 sq miles. Its diverse terrain spans rocky beaches, ancient forests, and crystal-clear lakes.
Saaremaa is famed for its diverse flora and fauna, thanks to its climate and lime-rich soil. You’ll find vast expanses of open spaces where beautiful magnolias and orchids grow alongside centuries-old cedars.
In 2014, we set up our first farm to cultivate the numerous rare plant species found in Estonia. Our organic farm, located near the village of Pihtla, covers more than five hectares of the XVI-century Tolluste Manor.
We selected this spot for a good reason -the plants in Saaremaa are exposed to wild winds, snow, ice and temperature extremes, leading to them developing unique protective properties which can be harnessed in our natural beauty products.
So, for example, Snow Cladonia stays green in temperatures of -50C and continues to grow under cover of snow. The wild sea buckthorn (Altai Oblepikha) has the highest concentrations of vitamins and polyphenols found in any plant throughout the northern hemisphere containing 15 times more vitamin C than oranges.
The estate surrounding the manor includes a picturesque park with old oaks, apple trees, willows, grey walnut trees, and juniper valleys. Here, in the nearby fields, we grow our plants and herbs.
Cornflower, camomile, marigold, and white melilot were the first plants to be planted at the farm and in the summer of 2016, we harvested our first crops.
We also pick wild plants and berries with the help of the local people who are fishermen in other seasons. We gather these plants in the state-owned Estonian woods from May to October under the strict control of the national environmental agency.
We harvest hypericum, nettle, primrose, Iceland moss, anemone, geranium, mountain ash tree berries, fir tree and pine tree needles, aquilegia, milfoil, ferns, lingonberries, raspberry and wild strawberry leaves this way, from their natural growing environment.
And after harvesting them, we dry the plants in traditional XVI-century stone buildings with straw roofs.
So, what makes Natura Siberica products so special?
Since July 2016, all extracts produced at Tolluste farm have been certified by the COSMOS Organic standard issued by the German association BDIH.
Manual picking (wild-harvesting) is a very long and painstaking process, but collecting this way ensures we preseve the maximum amount of vitamins, nutrients, extracts and oils to use in our products.
Wild harvesting by hand is governed by strict international standards to prevent depleting the area. At its core, this is the “gathering” of herbs, roots, and fruit that our ancestors have been doing for thousands of years.
But it’s not just a matter of picking the plants and hoping for the best! Wild harvesting has several requirements: the gathering time must be aligned with the maximum accumulation of valuable nutritive and biologically active substances in the plant.
It is vital not to over-harvest; leaves can be collected every year, but roots can only be taken every two to three years. And some plants need to be left for five years in between harvesting.
It is super important that the gathered plants are used as soon as possible by drying or other processing methods such as essential oil extraction. For example, grass that has stayed in a basket for more than a couple of hours self-heats, destroying vitamins and losing its unique properties.
Natura Siberica cosmetics do not contain:
