Calendula: The Farm Flower That Does Everything
There is a plant growing on my land in Home & Renton right now that I consider almost indispensable.
It's not rare. It's not exotic. It doesn't have a complicated Latin name that requires a botany degree to pronounce. It's calendula — Calendula officinalis — a cheerful, yellow-orange flower that most people walk past in the garden without a second thought, and that traditional herbalists have been reaching for, generation after generation, for as long as anyone has been keeping records of such things.
I grow it because I use it in almost everything I make. And I use it in almost everything I make because, in my experience and in the long record of herbal tradition, very few plants do as much for skin as consistently and as gently as this one.
Let me tell you everything I know about it.
A Brief History of a Very Old Remedy
Calendula has been documented in herbal use since at least the 12th century, when the German abbess and herbalist Hildegard of Bingen wrote about it in her medical texts. By the Renaissance, it was a staple of European herbal medicine — used topically for wounds, burns, and skin irritation, and internally for a range of conditions that we won't get into here for legal reasons (though the petals are quite tasty and beautiful on salads and cakes).
During the American Civil War, calendula was used on the battlefield as a wound dressing — one of the few herbal remedies that military surgeons of the era actively endorsed. Field reports from that period describe it being applied directly to wounds to support healing and reduce infection.
This is not a plant with a thin historical record. This is a plant that has been trusted by healers across cultures and centuries — and that is, in itself, a form of evidence worth taking seriously.
What Calendula Is Known For
In the traditional herbal record, calendula is consistently described as:
Vulnerary — from the Latin vulnus, meaning wound. A vulnerary herb is one traditionally used to support the healing of wounds and damaged skin. Calendula is one of the most widely cited vulnerary plants in Western herbal tradition.
Demulcent — soothing to irritated or inflamed tissue. Calendula has a long history of traditional use for skin that is reactive, sensitive, or easily irritated.
Antimicrobial — calendula has been traditionally used for its cleansing properties on skin, and this is one of the areas where modern research has begun to catch up with traditional knowledge. Several studies have examined the antimicrobial properties of calendula extracts, with promising results — though I want to be careful here to note that this research is ongoing and I am not making claims about what calendula does in any specific product.
Anti-inflammatory — calendula contains a range of compounds — including flavonoids, triterpenoids, and carotenoids — that have been the subject of research into their potential anti-inflammatory properties. Again, the research is promising and ongoing.
What I can say with confidence is this: calendula has a centuries-long track record of traditional use for exactly the kinds of skin concerns that modern research is now beginning to investigate. That alignment between traditional knowledge and emerging science is, to me, one of the most compelling things about botanical medicine.
Growing Calendula in the Pacific Northwest
Calendula is one of the most obliging plants I grow. It is unfailingly one of the first things I plant at a new home (if it's not already growing there, which it often is).
It tolerates our cool, wet Pacific Northwest springs without complaint. It blooms prolifically year-round in my neck of the woods (USDA zone 8b) — and the more you harvest, the more it produces. It is a perennial and also self-seeds readily, which means that once you establish it in a bed, it tends to come back year after year with minimal intervention.
I grow it in full sun in well-amended beds, direct sowing seed in early spring as soon as the soil can be worked. In our climate, this usually means March or April. Germination takes 7–14 days, and the plants are typically blooming by June. As a bonus, it is a fantastic companion plant for gardening.
Harvest timing matters. I pick the flowers when they are fully open but before they begin to fade — this is when the resinous compounds that make calendula so valuable in skin care are at their peak concentration. You can feel it on your fingers when you harvest: a slight stickiness, a warmth, a faint golden-green scent that is unlike anything else in the garden.
I harvest in the morning, after the dew has dried but before the heat of the day. The flowers go immediately to drying racks in a warm, well-ventilated space — never in direct sun, which degrades the volatile compounds. Properly dried calendula holds its color and its potency for up to a year.
The Slow Infusion Process
Once dried, the calendula flowers go into oil — and this is where patience becomes an ingredient.
The slow infusion method I most often use involves submerging dried calendula flowers in a carrier oil and allowing them to infuse at room temperature for four to six weeks. The oil is kept in a warm spot — a sunny windowsill, or near a heat source — and shaken or stirred daily to encourage the transfer of the plant's active constituents into the oil.
This is not the fastest method. You can make a heat-infused calendula oil in a few hours using a double boiler or a slow cooker, and sometimes I do. But in my experience — and in the experience of the traditional herbalists whose work I've studied — the slow infusion produces a richer, more complex oil that carries more of what makes calendula valuable.
The resulting oil is a deep, warm gold — the color of the flower itself, transferred into the oil through weeks of patient extraction. It smells of the plant: warm, faintly floral, green and earthy in a way that is deeply comforting.
That oil is the foundation of almost everything in the Rainroot Apothecary line.
Where You'll Find Calendula in Our Products
Because calendula is so central to our formulation philosophy, it appears across the product line in various forms:
In our salves and balms — as the primary infused oil base (I use rice bran and sunflower oil), bringing its traditional skin-soothing properties to our most therapeutic formulas. The First Aid Salve, in particular, is built around calendula-infused oil as its foundation.
In our lip balm — where calendula-infused jojoba oil provides the botanical base for a formula that is gentle enough for the most sensitive skin.
In our body care products — where it contributes to the overall skin-nourishing quality of the formula without dominating the ingredient list. Our Calendula Comfort Soap was the first soap I designed for my daughter, actually!
In our bath soaks — where dried calendula petals release their color and their gentle properties directly into the bathwater, turning an ordinary soak into something genuinely restorative.
In every case, most of the calendula we use is grown on our land, harvested at peak potency, dried carefully, and slow-infused by hand. There is no shortcut in this process — and the products are better for it.
A Note on Quality and Sourcing
Not all calendula is equal.
The calendula you find in mass-market skin care products is typically an extract — a standardized, concentrated form of the plant that has been processed to isolate specific compounds. This is not inherently bad, but it is a fundamentally different thing from a whole-plant slow infusion, and I think it's worth being honest about that difference.
When I use calendula in a Rainroot formula, I am using the whole flower — grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, harvested by hand, dried carefully, and infused slowly into oil. The resulting ingredient carries the full complexity of the plant, not just the compounds that have been identified and isolated.
This is a philosophical choice as much as a practical one. I believe — and the traditional herbal record supports — that whole plants often work differently than their isolated constituents. The compounds in a plant interact with each other in ways that we are only beginning to understand. That complexity is something I want to preserve, not process away.
How to Use Calendula at Home
If you want to explore calendula beyond what's in your Rainroot products, here are a few simple ways to work with it:
Calendula-infused oil — the same process I use, scaled down for home use. Fill a clean jar with dried calendula flowers, cover completely with a light carrier oil (jojoba, sunflower, olive oil, or rice bran all work beautifully), cap tightly, and leave in a warm sunny spot for 4–6 weeks, shaking daily. Strain through cheesecloth. Use as a facial oil, a massage oil, or as the base for a simple homemade salve.
Calendula compress — steep a strong infusion of dried calendula flowers in hot water, allow to cool to a comfortable temperature, soak a clean cloth, and apply to irritated or inflamed skin. One of the simplest and most traditional applications of this plant. You can add additional herbs, such as comfrey or plantain, as needed.
Calendula in the bath — add a handful of dried calendula flowers to a muslin bag and hang it from the faucet as the bath fills, or add directly to the water. The bathwater will turn a beautiful golden color, and your skin will thank you.
Calendula is not a miracle. No plant is. But it is one of the most consistently useful, most gently effective, most historically trusted botanicals in the Western herbal tradition — and growing it, harvesting it, and working with it is one of the genuine pleasures of this work.
If you've never grown it, I'd encourage you to try. It is forgiving, generous, and beautiful — and it will give you far more than you put in.
That, I think, is the best thing you can say about any plant.
— Briana, The Village Wisewoman, Renton, Washington
⚠️ Disclaimer: This post is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Statements about traditional herbal use do not constitute claims that any product diagnoses, treats, cures, or prevents any disease or health condition.
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