Summer solstice skin rituals 🌞

Get the Solstice Glow

Although the weather may not be giving *summer* every day, we’ve certainly had the warmth ~ the hedgerows seem to have changed almost overnight. Everything feels greener, fuller and more alive, with elderflower frothing in the lanes, wild roses beginning to appear and those long light evenings that make you want to stay outside by the firepit or on the beach until the very last bit of light disappears over the horizon.

The summer solstice is just around the corner; a pull to pause and notice the abundance of this time of year. The light, the growth, the warmth, the slightly feral joy of being outside whenever we can. Connecting with friends, family, festivals and food, quite literally stopping to smell the roses whenever we can.

“summer is such a beautiful, care-free season, but it can also be a surprisingly demanding one for skin.”

There’s SPF, sea salt, sweat, sand, pollen, dust, camping, gardening, late nights, festival weekends and all the general glorious chaos of summer. I love it all, but I also know that this is when my skin can start to feel a little weathered, congested or in need of some me time and self-care.

So this month, I've been leaning into simple rituals. Not complicated routines or endless steps, but a few beautiful plant-powered products that help you wash the day away, put goodness back in and feel a little more like yourself again.

In the workshop, I’ve been making fresh batches and spending a lot of time with some of my favourite summer skin ingredients. One of those is sea buckthorn, which seems to be having a bit of a moment online.

This month I’m reaching for… 

Sea buckthorn is a beautiful ingredient for the skin. The oil I use in my Wild Rose & Sea Buckthorn Beauty Balm is CO2-extracted, which helps preserve those precious active compounds, and it gives the balm that glorious golden-orange colour. Amazing after a day in the garden, a long coastal walk, a swim, or a weekend sleeping in a tent and dancing in a field, it feels like a very good way to give your face a little love.

Shop Wild Rose & Sea Buckthorn Beauty Balm

For cleansing, the Oil-to-Milk Cleanser is one of my favourite summer essentials. I have always loved that end-of-day reset: washing off SPF, make-up, sweat, dust, pollen and all the general debris that somehow gathers on your skin when you have been outside all day. It’s the product I pack for a festival, a weekend away, a campervan trip or any long summer day that ends with your skin asking to be rescued.

Shop Oil-to-Milk Cleanser

I hope June gives you a few of those golden, ordinary moments that make this time of year so special. A walk through the lanes. A swim. Music somewhere under the open sky. A cup of tea in the garden. The smell of roses after rain. Five minutes at the end of the day, washing everything off and putting a little goodness back in.

With warmth, Polly