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Leonie Cornelius is an award winning garden designer, based in Sligo (Ireland), writer and founder of design company waė. Leonie’s work focuses on creating a strong connection between wild nature and each other through lasting and wildly beautiful designs and collaborations to make life more joyful every day.
Leonie Cornelius & L’OCCITANE have partnered up this Spring to bring you a series of gardening tips inspired by Provence and Leonie’s favourite L’OCCITANE products. Enjoy! All photos by: Colin Gillen
While many of us don’t think twice when we pick up a bag of almonds or almond flour, these trees are treasure troves of goodness. The edible and medicinal harvested nuts are packed full of vitamin E and are highly antioxidant, making it a perfect choice both for eating as well as beauty products. Including almonds in your daily diet and beauty routine is said to have many benefits including anti-ageing properties due to its high Vitamin E content which helps to protect cells from the damage caused by free radicals- making the almond a perfect anti-ageing treatment.
It is no wonder so that the precious almond has made its way into many beauty products and the L’Occitane Almond range is packed full of gorgeous almonds grown indigenously in the south of France. One of the things I love the most about the Almond range is that the almonds which go into the L’Occitane almond range come from local producers in the South of France meaning that the almond tree, which had long been forgotten in the region for favour of Olives, is once again becoming a familiar element of the Provençal landscape. In this way of a product which was inspired by this rich natural landscape gives back to the wild landscape again. A wonderful organic cycle.
"This is my all-time favourite shower oil. The scent is incredible and it makes your skin super soft."
"This new scrub has a really natural and soft scent. I love to mix it with the almond shower oil and use it for scrubbing my hands right now; they get so dry with the gloves and hand sanitizer and nothing rejuvenates like this."
"I have a really sensitive scalp and this shampoo and conditioner are a real find. Super gentle, amazing soft results and they smell absolutely divine! Like almond, apple blossom and fresh air."
Welcome to the first of my L’Occitane Garden series where I explore how to bring a little happy design magic of the Provence into your gardens wherever you may be. Right now, with everything happening in our world I really think we all need beauty, green and a deeper connection to the wild more than ever and in this series I hope you will find some joy and inspiration for your own garden space and your beauty routine every day. Follow Leonie on Instagram for more Home and Garden designs!
Create your own L’Occitane inspired blossom garden
"I bet you’re dreaming of scented blossoms now - I certainly am! If you love the ideas of designing a part of your garden around the idea of blossoming beauties like the almond - or even just including some decadent blooms for Spring - here’s some ideas for creating a Provençal L’Occitane inspired blossom garden right here." - Leonie Cornelius
Now that we have an abundance of blooms the scheme will want to be pulled together with structure and texture. The addition of some evergreen accents under the trees and shrubs will be a good start. When it comes to sunnier areas creeping Rosemary (Rosmarinus prostatus) is hard to beat. This shrub truly works with everything and is perfectly Provençal in feel- my all-time favourite sun loving ground cover- and that scent!
For shade loving ground covering under the trees, how about adding some evergreen fern texture? Polystichum and Blechnum varieties are good starting points and for unusual red accents try Blechnum brasiliense ‘Volcano’. For a lush evergreen creeping groundcover Vinca minor f. alba 'Gertrude Jekyll’ is a wonderful choice and very easy to maintain and little accent areas of Epimedium grandiflorum 'Lilafee' echo the blossom feel of the trees in more shaded areas in the most delicate way.
The final touch here is my favourite grass for growing in shade and light sun- the Hakonechloa macra- a stunning arching soft grass, which grows in mounds and softens a scheme perfectly- pulling it all together in a rich, emerald green.