Beauty Begins in the Garden
Beauty begins in the garden says a lot about the Dr.Hauschka approach to skin care. The healing, therapeutic properties of plants are the very foundation of the complete line of skin care products. From the beginning, Dr.Hauschka Skin Care has based its approach to personal care on an in-depth understanding of the power of healing plants to restore and maintain healthy skin. To create the most effective botanical preparations, the healthiest and most vital plants are used.
WALA medicinal herb garden
A medicinal herb garden on the heavy clay soils of the Swabian Mountains? The farmers of Eckwälden looked very sceptical when WALA started searching for a plot of land for their new project in the 1950s. Rudolf Hauschka purchased a boggy meadow at the foot of the mountain directly behind the construction site for the new company building, and WALA gardeners have been cultivating this land ever since using biodynamic methods. After many years the soil became crumbly and easy to work.
The gardeners currently grow more than 150 different medicinal plants for the manufacture of WALA products on an area which now covers more than 4.5 hectares. Butterflies, dragonflies, toads and fire salamanders have made their homes amid the water lily pond, stream, beehives, meadows and woods.
What is biodynamics and what is the difference between organic and biodynamic?
The biodynamic method was developed by Dr. Rudolf Steiner in 1924 and pre-dates the organic movement by about twenty years. Both have a lot in common: composting, no use of chemicals, crop rotation and the use of green manure… but biodynamics goes further. Biodynamics regards the garden or farm as a more or less closed system. The seeds, compost and potting compost are for the most part self-produced. It uses various plant preparations which help compost to decompose better and strengthen the resistance of plants to pests and diseases and uses the rhythms of nature, the moon and planets to determine when to sow and harvest. Strong, healthy plants are the result.
Fair trade
With cultivation projects throughout the world WALA - the company behind Dr.Hauschka Skin Care - ensures that ingredients of the highest standard are always available in sufficient quantity. WALA promotes biodynamic agriculture and makes it possible for people in economically underdeveloped countries to determine their own future. Shea butter from Burkina Faso in Africa and Rose essential oil from Bulgaria are just two examples of this.
Shea butter from Burkina Faso
Some 350 women from two villages are currently producing Shea butter for WALA. The women have organised themselves in a producers’ cooperative, a purely women’s community which is common and normal in Africa. Shea butter was always women’s business. For the project the women have given themselves the name ‘IKEUFA’ (faire bien et meilleur de Diarabakoko) which means something like: do good and better in Diarabakoko.
All positions in the cooperative, from the president through the treasurer to the secretary, are elected by the village women. They have always had their own fields and earned their own money which they administer themselves. The self-assured Burkina Faso women discuss all project issues in detail with WALA, for example the question of how they can meet WALA’s high standards of quality and hygiene. The money earned from selling the Shea butter enables the women to pay the school fees for their children and to send all their children to school instead of just one or two. It also allows them to meet their basic needs in terms of food and necessary medicinal drugs.
